Selling Land for Development, Step by Step: From First Thought to Completion

Selling land for development is a sequence, not a single event, and most of it happens before any money changes hands. The people around the table change at each step: first you and the company you talk to, then your solicitor and land agent, then the council, its consultees and the public, and finally the solicitors again at completion.

This is the process of selling land to a developer or a strategic land company under an option agreement, which is the route we use. Each stage has its own section further down.

1. Check the basics. Your title register and plan, who owns the land, any tenancy or grazing arrangement, and how the land reaches a road. Nothing is signed and nobody is told.
2. A first conversation and a free desktop review. A call about the land, then an assessment made from maps and records. It takes a few days and commits you to nothing.
3. Heads of terms. If the review supports it, a short written summary of the proposed deal, marked subject to contract, that the whole family can read in one sitting.
4. The option agreement, signed and registered. Your solicitor and ours turn the heads of terms into a contract, and the agreement is then noted on your title at HM Land Registry. The land stays yours.
5. Surveys, design and consultation. Specialists visit by arrangement, the council's officers are consulted, and the route to planning is settled: a planning application, the local plan, or both.
6. The planning decision. An application is submitted, publicised and decided, or the land is allocated in the local plan first. If the council refuses and there is a realistic case, an appeal may follow.
7. Permission, conditions and Section 106. The permission comes with conditions, and usually with a legal agreement securing affordable homes and contributions, which you sign as the owner.
8. Completion and payment. Once planning permission has been secured, the option is exercised, the purchase completes and you receive the agreed price, with milestones set out in the agreement.
9. Tax afterwards. The gain is reported to HMRC, on a timetable that depends on what was sold and where you live.

Start with the paperwork you already have, or can get for a few pounds. None of it needs a professional, and having it to hand makes every later stage quicker.

The most useful document is the title register. HM Land Registry sells a copy of the register and of the title plan for £7 each through its online service, for any registered land in England and Wales. If an official copy is needed later, that cannot be downloaded: HM Land Registry sends it by post, at £11 a document. The title plan shows where the land is and its general boundaries, which means the red line is a guide to the extent of the land rather than an exact survey of where your hedge or fence stands.

• Find every title number for the land, since a holding bought in pieces often has several, and download the register and plan for each. Make a note of any parcel you believe you own that does not appear on a plan.
• Write down everyone who owns the land: joint owners, trustees, or executors if the owner has died. Each of them will sign any agreement, so it helps to know early who speaks for the family.
• Look on the register for a mortgage or other charge. The lender will need to be part of any sale, so it is worth knowing it is there.
• List everyone who uses the land: a farm business tenancy, an older agricultural tenancy, a grazing licence, a cottage let. Our guide to tenancies and vacant possession explains how each one is brought to an end at the right time.
• Check how the land reaches a public road. A strip of someone else's land between your gate and the highway changes how a scheme is designed, and our guide to access and ransom strips explains why.
• Write down what no map shows: wet corners, an old tip, a path people have walked for years, buried pipes or cables, and any planning applications made on the land in the past.

Who is involved at this stage: you, and anyone who shares the ownership. Documents: the title registers and plans, and any written tenancy or licence. What happens on the land: nothing at all.

The first conversation is a phone call or a meeting in which you tell us where the land is, how it is farmed or let, who holds the title and what you hope will happen. We ask about the points in the checklist above, because each one has to be dealt with in any agreement, but you do not need every answer before you call. Many owners ring with a title number and a rough idea of the acreage, and that is enough to start.

Leases matter more than many owners expect. For planning purposes, government guidance counts as an owner anyone with the freehold or with a lease that has at least seven years left to run, and each of them must be given notice before an application is made. A barn, yard or mast site let on a long lease can therefore bring another person into the process, and it is far better to know that in the first week.

We then carry out a desktop review. With us it takes a few days, costs you nothing and involves no approach to the council, the parish or your neighbours. Its job is to settle which route to planning fits the land, how many homes it might take, and what would need solving, such as the access, the drainage or a tenancy. The review ends with a straight answer and the reasons for it, whichever way it goes, and you can ask for a free desktop review of your own land at any time.

What You Decide at This Stage

• Nothing that binds you. A conversation and a review create no obligation, and you can stop at any point, or put the matter away for a year.
• Whether to have a visit. Where it helps, we walk the land with you, on a day you choose and only with your agreement.
• Whether to see terms in writing. That is the next stage, and it is still not binding.
• Who joins the conversation. Many owners bring in a son or daughter, a co-owner or a land agent from here.

Heads of terms are a short written summary of a proposed deal, set out before any lawyer drafts the contract. They are not intended to be binding, and they are marked 'subject to contract' to show that neither side means to be committed until a formal contract is signed.

RICS, the professional body for chartered surveyors, describes the purpose of heads of terms as recording accurately the scope and principal points of the agreed deal, and advises that all heads of terms should be marked 'subject to contract', which helps to show that no contract is yet intended. The solicitors then draft the full agreement from them, which saves time and legal cost because the main points are already settled.

For land, the law adds a firmer safeguard. Under section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, a contract to sell or otherwise dispose of an interest in land must be made in writing, setting out every term the parties have expressly agreed and signed by or on behalf of each of them, and an option over land falls within it. The same section allows a term to be included by referring to another document, which is how a plan of the land or a schedule of field numbers becomes part of the agreement without being copied into its text. Heads of terms, a letter or a handshake over the gate therefore neither sell your land nor oblige you to.

Heads of terms from us set out, in plain words:

• which land is covered, shown on a plan;
• the price, written as a figure;
• any option fee, where one is offered;
• our contribution towards your own solicitor's and land agent's fees;
• the main condition, which is that planning permission is secured;
• the solicitors acting on each side.

The solicitors turn the heads of terms into the option agreement: a contract giving us the right to buy the land at the agreed price once planning permission has been secured. Signing it passes no ownership. The land is still yours, and you carry on using it as before. On our own stage timings, heads of terms and the agreement together take six weeks to three months, mostly depending on the solicitors and on any title issues.

Once signed, the agreement is recorded against your title at HM Land Registry, usually by an entry called a notice. HM Land Registry's practice guide describes a notice as an entry in the register for the burden of an interest affecting the land, and explains that a valid interest protected this way keeps its priority when a later sale or charge for value is registered. The same guide is careful to add that a notice does not by itself prove the interest is valid; that rests on the agreement. In plain terms, anyone who buys or lends on the land afterwards takes it subject to the agreement, and anyone who buys a copy of the register can see the entry.

Our guide to option agreements explained goes through the agreement itself in plain English, including the surveys on your land and what happens to them.

Before anything is submitted, the route is settled: a planning application, the local plan, or both, depending on where the land sits and on the council's housing position.

The Application Route

A planning application can be made without waiting for the council's plan where national policy supports homes on the land. The National Planning Policy Framework of August 2026 says, in policy S4, that development inside a settlement should be approved unless the benefits would be substantially outweighed by the harm. Policy S5 covers land outside settlements: it supports sites that are well related to a settlement and can be served by infrastructure, where an unmet need for homes is evidenced. Need counts as evidenced where the council's Housing Delivery Test result is below 75%, while a supply of less than five years is evidence of unmet need to be weighed in the balance, not an automatic finding. In the Green Belt policy S5 does not apply: grey belt has its own test of need, and the Golden Rules apply to larger schemes.

Applications for land are often made in outline. Government guidance describes outline permission as allowing a decision on the general principles of how a site can be developed. The detail, meaning layout, appearance, scale, landscaping and sometimes access, is left as reserved matters, to be approved later.

The Local Plan Route

Where a council is meeting its housing numbers, or the land is large, the surer route is often the local plan. The council invites land to be put forward, assesses what it receives and allocates the sites it chooses. Under the plan-making system in force from 25 March 2026, a council is expected to prepare its plan within 30 months, a clock that starts when it publishes its first gateway self-assessment. An allocation does not grant permission by itself, but the framework says proposals that comply with an up-to-date development plan and with the framework's decision-making policies should be approved without delay.

Surveys, Pre-Application Advice and Consultation

Whichever route applies, the evidence comes first, and we commission and pay for all of it: ecology, highways, drainage, trees and heritage, with landscape and design alongside. On our timings the surveys take three to twelve months, because several ecology surveys have to wait for the right season, and pre-application advice and community consultation take two to six months, often running alongside. Government guidance says talking to the council before submission helps both sides agree what information is needed, and so avoid disputes over what is required to validate an application. Where it is clear from the outset that a scheme will need longer than the standard decision period, the guidance on determining applications suggests the council and the applicant consider a planning performance agreement before submission: a project timetable for the application, agreed between them in writing.

• Who is involved: our planners and consultants, the council's officers, the highway authority, and, at consultation, the parish and the community.
• Documents: survey reports, a draft layout, the council's pre-application response and the consultation material. You see the scheme before it is shown to anyone else.
• What you do: agree dates for surveyors, timed around stock, crops and any shoot, and tell us about anything on the ground the maps miss.
• What happens on the land: short visits on foot, some at dawn or dusk for bats and birds, each arranged with you. Nothing is built and no boundary is altered, and anything disturbed, a gate, a fence or a strip of crop, is made good.

The application form carries an ownership certificate, because the planning system lets anyone apply for permission on land they do not own. Government guidance requires the applicant to notify every owner and every agricultural tenant before submitting, and to certify that it has done so; where all of them are known, the certificate used is certificate B. So the first formal paper you receive from the planning stage is our notice to you as owner, and a tenant who farms the land receives one too.

Once the application is submitted, the council checks it is complete, publicises it and asks bodies such as the highway authority and the lead local flood authority for their views. Neighbours and the parish council can comment. Government guidance expects councils to let officers decide applications that raise no significant planning issues, keeping committee time for the most significant, and whichever decides, the date of the decision is the date the notice is issued.

The council's decision period, 13 weeks for major development and 8 weeks for most other applications, can be extended by written agreement between the council and the applicant.

The Planning Inspectorate's procedural guide says only the person who made the planning application can appeal, and that for an application of this kind the appeal must reach the Inspectorate within 6 months of the date on the decision notice. Under our route the applicant is us, so the decision to appeal, and the whole cost of it, are ours. On our timings an appeal commonly takes six months to a year, and our agreement continues while any planning application or appeal is being decided. The routes after a refusal, and what reaches you in the post while an application is decided, are the subject of our guide to what happens if planning is refused.

Planning permission almost always comes with conditions: requirements the development has to meet, such as approving drainage details or a construction plan before work begins. They govern how the homes are built, and they do not change how you use the land before completion.

A Section 106 agreement is different, and it does involve you. Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 gives it its name, and it is the deed that secures affordable homes, payments towards schools and roads, open space and similar obligations. The Act lets any person interested in land enter into such an obligation, and makes it enforceable against the person who enters into it and against anyone who later derives title from that person. That is why the council asks the owner to sign: the obligations travel with the land.

The Act also sets the form. The obligation must be made by deed, and the deed must identify the land, the person entering into it and what that person's interest in the land is, which is why your solicitor will be asked for up-to-date copies of every title. Once made, it is a local land charge, so it shows up on the local search any later buyer carries out. The Act allows the deed to say that a person is not bound for any period after they have parted with their interest in the land.

• Who is involved: the council's lawyers, often the county council as well for school and road contributions, our solicitors and yours.
• Documents: the committee's resolution or the draft decision notice, the draft Section 106 agreement and its plan, and up-to-date copies of every title.
• What you do: sign as owner when the agreement is ready, with your solicitor beside you. We run the negotiation with the council, and our contribution to your solicitor's fees extends to this part too.
• When permission counts as secured: the agreement defines the point at which planning permission counts as secured, and that definition is what sets the next stage moving.

Affordable housing, contributions and the other obligations are costs of the scheme, and under our route they are ours to negotiate and carry. They do not change the price agreed with you at the start.

Completion is the day the land is sold and the agreed price is paid, and it follows once planning permission has been secured.

1. The option is exercised. Once planning permission has been secured, we give written notice exercising the option, in the way the agreement sets out. From then on, both sides are bound to complete.
2. The solicitors prepare for completion. Your solicitor deals with the transfer deed, the release of any mortgage over the land being sold, and the vacant possession the agreement requires, such as the end of a grazing licence on an agreed date.
3. Completion. We complete the purchase and you receive the agreed price on completion, with any milestones set out in the agreement. You hand over vacant possession on that day and no earlier.
4. Registration. The transfer is registered at HM Land Registry in our name, and the land you are keeping stays on your own title as before.

Nobody can promise the date of a council decision, so nobody can honestly promise a payment date at the start, and we do not. The agreement does set out each milestone, and the time allowed between our notice and completion.

Reporting the Gain to HMRC

A sale of development land usually produces a capital gain, and HMRC's reporting rules depend on what is sold and where you live. A UK resident must report and pay any Capital Gains Tax due on UK residential property within 60 days of completing the sale, while an owner who is not UK resident must report every sale or disposal of UK property or land by that deadline, even with no tax to pay. HMRC's online property return asks, among other things, for the date you got the property and its value when you sold it, so it helps to find early on the deed or record showing when and how the land came to you, whether by purchase, gift or inheritance. Our guide to tax when selling land for development explains how a sale of bare land is usually reported and what to plan for while the agreement runs.

Almost every document a landowner signs arrives in stages 3, 4, 7 and 8; in between, the work is done by others, at our cost, while the land carries on as it is. Our guide to how long planning takes puts these stages into an illustrative timeline from first call to completion.

There are three common ways of selling land with planning potential, and each is a different journey.

Selling Outright Today

An outright sale is the quickest of the three, because there is no planning period. A buyer is found, a price is agreed, the solicitors exchange contracts and the sale completes. The price reflects what the land is worth today as farmland, paddock or yard, together with whatever a buyer is willing to pay for the chance of planning later. After completion the land, the planning work and its risk all belong to the buyer, and the matter is closed. For an owner who wants a clean break now, that is the point of it.

A Promotion Agreement

Under a promotion agreement a promoter funds and runs the planning work and then helps sell the land on the open market. From the sale proceeds the promoter is reimbursed its agreed costs and paid a fee or a percentage, and the balance comes to you; our guide to promotion agreement fees and deductions works through how that is calculated.

An Option Agreement With Us

Our route includes the planning period, and it is the simple, certain one: the figure agreed at the start is the figure you receive, because the planning is ours to fund and nothing is deducted from your price at the end.