Should I Sell My Land With or Without Planning Permission First?

For most owners of a field, the practical choice is not "with" or "without" planning but who does the planning work, who pays for it and who carries the risk that it fails. That decides almost everything else: when you know your figure, what you spend before you know it, and what happens if the council says no.

There are three positions open to you. You can sell the land as it is today, to a buyer who takes on any planning prospect along with the land. You can sell it subject to planning, which means agreeing the deal now and completing once permission has been secured, with the buyer running the planning in between. Or you can apply for planning permission yourself, as the owner, and look for a buyer once you have it.

Each position suits a different owner. The rest of this guide takes them one at a time, then looks at what applying yourself really involves in money, months and risk, how outline and full permission differ, why a permission can lapse while you look for a buyer, and why a single garden plot is a different question from a field.

Selling as it is means a straightforward sale of the land in its current use, at a price agreed now and paid on completion. It is the quickest of the three positions, because there is no planning period at all. Once the sale completes, the land, any planning prospect and every risk attached to it belong to the buyer.

The price reflects two things: what the land is worth for its present use, as farmland, paddock or yard, and whatever extra a buyer is prepared to pay for the chance of planning one day. That extra is called hope value. Because the buyer is paying cash today for a possibility that may never come to anything, and would then have to fund the planning work and wait for the outcome, hope value on land with no planning status is usually a modest premium. Our guide to how the price for your land is worked out explains the three values of a field and why hope value is judged the way it is.

Who It Suits

• An owner who wants a clean break now, for example to settle an estate, release cash for another purchase or stop farming.
• Land with no realistic planning prospect, where there is no planning question to answer and the sale is simply a sale.
• Executors who need cash in hand to settle an estate's debts or tax, where the land itself has to be turned into money.

The thing to understand about this position is what you are handing over. A buyer who pays today's value plus a modest hope value is taking on the planning question in your place, at their own cost and risk, and whatever the land later becomes is theirs.

Selling subject to planning means signing an agreement now under which the land is sold once planning permission has been secured. Until then you stay the owner and keep using the land. The buyer does the planning work in the meantime. There are two common forms: an option agreement and a conditional contract.

A Conditional Contract

A conditional contract is a contract for the sale of land that only has to be completed if a condition is met. Sophie Fletcher of the solicitors Hay and Kilner sets out the essentials in a note for landowners of April 2026: a conditional contract is binding from the outset, both parties are legally obliged to proceed once the condition is met, completion takes place once it is satisfied, and the most common condition is the grant of satisfactory planning permission. If the condition is not satisfied, the contract will typically fall away.

An Option Agreement

An option agreement gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy the land once planning permission has been secured, at a price or by a method set out in the agreement. The buyer pays for and runs the planning. The way the price is set is where options differ most. Myles Shearman of Greenwoods Legal notes in a guide of September 2025 that under an option the developer takes on more of the risk and pays the initial cost of satisfying the conditions, and will then ask for a deduction of these costs from the purchase price. Ours is different: the price is agreed at the start, written into the agreement as a figure, set above what the land is worth today, and nothing is deducted from it for the planning work.

In both forms you keep the land and its income while planning is sought, and the buyer, not you, faces the cost of the surveys, the application and any appeal. That is the heart of selling subject to planning: the planning risk moves off your side of the table before any money is spent. Our comparison of option, promotion and outright sale also covers promotion agreements, where the land is sold on the open market after planning and the promoter's costs and fee come off the proceeds.

1. Find out what the council will expect. Read the council's local plan, its land availability assessment and its housing position, and decide whether to apply now or put the land forward for the next local plan first.
2. Appoint a planning consultant. A chartered town planner who knows the council writes the planning statement, reads the policies, manages the other consultants and speaks for you at the council. It is usually the first fee of many.
3. Ask the council for pre-application advice. A meeting with planning officers and a written response on whether the principle is acceptable and what the application must include. Councils set their own charge for it.
4. Commission the surveys and reports. Ecology, trees, drainage, flood risk, transport, heritage and landscape, each by a specialist consultant, some only possible at certain times of year.
5. Prepare the scheme and submit the application. An illustrative layout or a full design, the forms, the plans, the certificate that owners and agricultural tenants have been notified, and the council's application fee.
6. See it through the decision. Answer consultees, revise the scheme where officers ask, attend the planning committee if it goes there, and negotiate the Section 106 agreement that secures affordable housing and contributions.
7. Appeal if it is refused, and you judge the case strong enough. A new set of costs, and months more.
8. Then sell. Find a buyer for land with permission, agree a price and complete, before the permission runs out.

Every one of those steps is a cost that falls on the landowner, and it falls whether or not permission is granted. The surveys are paid for when they are done, not when the council decides. If the council refuses and an appeal fails, the reports, the consultant's fees and the council's fee are spent, and the land is where it started, with a refusal now on its planning history.

The Reports a Council Expects

Councils publish a local validation list: the documents an application must include before the council will register it. Ribble Valley Borough Council's checklist adopted on 29 May 2025 is a typical example. For a housing application on a field, it can call for:

• A planning statement, for all major applications.
• A design and access statement, required for major development, which the checklist defines as 10 dwellings or more.
• A biodiversity report, wherever protected or priority species or habitats may be affected, with surveys done within 24 months before the application is registered.
• A tree survey and arboricultural impact assessment to the British Standard BS 5837, where trees or hedgerows may be affected.
• A flood risk assessment for a site of more than 1 hectare in flood zone 1, the lowest risk zone, and a sustainable drainage strategy for all major development, in outline form for an outline application.
• A heritage statement where a listed building or other heritage asset is involved, including an archaeological desk-based assessment where the site has or may have archaeological interest.
• A landscape and visual impact assessment where the site is particularly sensitive in landscape or visual terms.
• An affordable housing statement, a noise assessment, a land contamination statement and a statement of community involvement, each where its trigger applies, plus the national biodiversity net gain information.

One hectare is just under two and a half acres, so on that checklist almost any field large enough for a village-edge scheme needs a flood risk assessment, even where it has never flooded. Each report is a separate commission, with its own consultant and its own fee, and several feed into each other: the drainage strategy depends on the layout, and the layout depends on the ecology and the trees.

Two charges come from the council itself: the fee for pre-application advice, which each council sets, and the application fee, which is set nationally. Both are published, so they are the one part of the bill an owner can know exactly in advance. The consultants' fees, which are agreed privately with each firm, come on top.

Pre-Application Advice

Each council sets its own charges for pre-application advice, and the advice is paid for separately from the application fee. Swale Borough Council in Kent sets its scale in its fees and charges schedule for 2026/27, which runs from April 2026 to March 2027, with each fee shown inclusive of VAT and set to recover the council's costs. A scheme falls into Swale's major band if it meets any one of the band's measures, so a field of 0.51 hectares or more is at least a major scheme there, whatever the number of homes. The figures below are the 2026/27 charges.

The Application Fee

The council's fee for an application for new homes is set in national regulations and rises each April with inflation. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's schedule of fees from 1 April 2026 charges an outline application by site area: £610 for each 0.1 hectare or part of one on a site under 0.5 hectares, and £659 for each 0.1 hectare or part of one from 0.5 to 2.5 hectares. A full application is charged by the number of homes, at £610 each for fewer than 10 and £659 each for 10 to 50. When the details of an outline scheme follow later, the full fee for those homes is charged then.

The council's charges are the most predictable part of the bill. The consultants' fees depend on the site, the number of reports and how much revision the council asks for, and an appeal brings its own costs. The one certainty is the order: everything is paid for before the answer is known.

The law gives a council 13 weeks to decide an application for major development and 8 weeks for most others, or 16 weeks where an environmental impact assessment is needed. Those periods can be extended by agreement, and government guidance says any such agreement must be in writing and set out the timescale within which a decision is expected. The same guidance sets the aim that no application should spend more than a year with decision-makers, including any appeal.

In practice, extensions are the normal route for larger schemes. The government's planning statistics for April to June 2026, published on 24 September 2026, show that councils in England decided 19% of major applications within the statutory 13 weeks, and 91% within 13 weeks or the agreed time. For minor applications the figures were 39% within the statutory 8 weeks and 87% within 8 weeks or the agreed time. So a landowner applying for a field should expect the decision period to be agreed with the council rather than to run to the statutory clock, and the surveys, pre-application advice and preparation all come before it starts.

The Risk of Refusal

In the year to June 2026, 37,100 decisions were made on applications for residential development in England, of which 28,000, or 76%, were granted. Put the other way, roughly one residential application in four was not granted. The same release records that grant rates for April to June 2026 varied most between councils for major developments, with most councils falling between 60% and 100%, so where the land sits matters a great deal.

Those figures cover every kind of residential application, from a single house in a town to a large estate, so they are a national backdrop rather than the odds for any one field. Whether a field outside a settlement boundary can be approved turns on the national policy tests for land outside settlements, which our guide to the August 2026 framework explains.

If the council refuses, an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate is possible. The Inspectorate's own figures for planning appeals decided in June 2026 give a median of 17 weeks by written representations, 19 weeks for a hearing and 27 weeks for an inquiry, measured from the point the appeal is valid, on top of the time to prepare it. The inquiry figure rests on only 15 decisions, which the Inspectorate itself flags for particular care. For an owner who applied, the appeal is theirs to run and to pay for. Our guide to what happens if planning is refused explains the routes after a refusal in detail.

If an owner does apply before selling, outline permission is the usual choice for a field. Outline permission settles the principle of homes on the land and the main parameters, while leaving the detail for later. Section 92 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 describes it as permission granted with the reservation for later approval of matters not particularised in the application, which are called reserved matters. Government guidance names five: access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale, and an outline application can leave any or all of them for later.

Full permission, sometimes called detailed permission, settles everything at once: the exact homes, where each one sits, what it looks like and how the site is landscaped. It needs a complete design, which costs more to prepare, and it fixes a scheme that a later buyer may not want to build.

Owners are sometimes told to get outline planning before selling land. Outline permission does settle the principle, which is the hardest question. But it is still the owner who pays for the surveys and the application, carries the risk that the council refuses, and then has to find a buyer within the time the permission allows.

Yes. A planning permission in England is not permanent until it is used. Section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 says every planning permission is granted subject to a condition that the development must be begun not later than the expiration of the applicable period, which in England is three years from the grant, unless the council directs a longer or shorter period. Section 92 sets the outline timetable: an application for approval of the reserved matters within three years of the outline grant, and the development begun within two years of the final approval of the reserved matters.

For an owner who gets planning and then sells, that clock matters more than it first appears. It starts on the day permission is granted, not on the day a buyer is found. The time spent marketing the land, negotiating, drafting contracts and completing all comes out of it, and a buyer who wants to build will then need time to prepare and submit the reserved matters, discharge the conditions and start work before the deadline.

Under our option agreement the question does not arise for you. We are the applicant and the buyer, so the purchase completes once planning permission has been secured, and the work to use the permission is ours.

A plot for one house in a large garden is a small application that a homeowner can reasonably make themselves. A field for a village-edge scheme is not. The difference lies in the cost, the reports, the policy test and the risk.

Policy Treats Gardens Differently

The August 2026 National Planning Policy Framework gives substantial weight to the benefits of additional homes within existing plots in settlements, including additional units within residential curtilages, a garden being the curtilage of the house. Policy L2 sets out what such proposals should do: be consistent with the overall street scene, maintain safe access and acceptable living standards for residents and neighbours, and, where a garden is used, not occupy more than twice the footprint of all the existing buildings on the site, while keeping at least 50% of the undeveloped area of the garden, unless the extra development can be accommodated without harm to the character of the area. A plot inside a village or town that meets those tests has policy on its side in a way a field outside the settlement does not.

The Costs Are on a Different Scale

Compare that with the three-acre field above: the council's charges alone are more than seven times higher, before a single report is commissioned, and the field brings the flood risk assessment, the drainage strategy, the ecology, the transport work, the affordable housing statement and the Section 106 negotiation with it. If a garden application is refused, the costs do not stop there: Swale, for example, charges half of the original pre-application fee for advice after a refusal, and a fresh application brings a fresh fee.

When It Makes Sense to Apply Yourself

• The plot is inside a town or village, not in open countryside or the Green Belt.
• It is for one or two homes, with its own safe access onto the road.
• The new home would fit the street and leave the existing house a reasonable garden.
• No protected trees, listed building or flood zone is involved.
• You are comfortable paying a few thousand pounds in fees and drawings with no certainty of approval.

Where all of those apply, applying yourself is a sensible, proportionate step, and many homeowners do it. A field of several acres, on the edge of a settlement and needing a full set of reports, is a different undertaking, and it is the kind of land we look at: our page on paddocks and small sites explains the sizes and settings we consider.

Because every planning cost and every planning risk described above moves to us, and the one thing that matters most to you, the figure, is settled before any of it is spent. An option agreement with us is a sale subject to planning in which the price is agreed at the start and the planning is entirely our responsibility.

• We pay for and run all of the planning. The planning consultant, the surveys and reports, pre-application advice, the council's fees, the Section 106 negotiation and any appeal. On a larger site that can reach £300,000, and none of it is recovered from your price.
• The price is agreed at the start. It is written into the agreement as a figure, set above what the land is worth today, and it is not reduced if costs rise during planning.
• You keep and use the land. You carry on using it as you do now, and the income from it stays with you until completion.
• The agreement continues while any application or appeal is being decided. A slow council or a refusal followed by an appeal does not end it.
• If planning is not achieved, you keep your land and owe nothing, however much has been spent.
• Payment is on completion, once planning permission has been secured, with milestones set out in the agreement.
• We contribute to your own solicitor and land agent, so it costs you nothing to have the agreement checked properly.

Set that against the position of an owner who applies alone. There is no outlay before the outcome is known, no report to commission, no committee to attend, no appeal to fund, and no permission clock to beat while a buyer is found. Our guide to option agreements explains the agreement itself in plain English, from signing to completion.

If you would like to know which of the three positions fits your own land, a free desktop review looks at its title, constraints, access and the council's position, and gives you a plain answer. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.