The Call for Sites, land assessments and land promoters, explained

The Call for Sites is the council's invitation to put land forward for its new plan. Anyone can propose land, even land they don't own ¹. Councils don't have to publish the sites they receive, but are encouraged to ¹. At this stage no decisions have been made on which sites will be taken forward ¹.

The council assesses each site against three tests ^3,2:

Under the new plan system, councils then rate each site: green for a strong candidate for allocation, amber for a candidate that needs more work or mitigation, and red for one that is not currently a candidate ². The assessment itself does not decide whether a site is allocated; only the Local Plan does that ³.

Two terms from national policy come up a lot. A deliverable site is available now, suitable now, and achievable with a realistic prospect of homes within five years. A developable site is in a suitable location with a reasonable prospect it could be developed at the point expected ⁶.

Housebuilders usually secure land before it has planning permission under contract, usually through an option agreement: the right to buy it later, typically once permission is granted ⁴. Land promoters work on behalf of landowners to get land through the planning system, then sell it to a housebuilder; the Competition and Markets Authority found this model expanded after the 2008 financial crisis ⁴.

The scale is large. In 2022, the 11 biggest housebuilders held about 1.17 million plots on more than 5,800 sites, of which roughly 656,000 were longer-term strategic land without planning permission ⁴. That strategic land had been held for seven years on average, and about three-quarters of it was not allocated in a Local Plan ⁴.

An option is often protected by a notice on the land's title at HM Land Registry ⁷, and from 6 April 2027 holders of such rights over land must report them to the Land Registry ⁸. See how to find out if land near you will be built on.

Lichfields' study of 297 sites found that small sites of up to 99 homes saw their first home 3.8 years after the planning application was validated, on average. For sites of 500 homes or more it took 4.9 to 6.6 years, and for sites of 2,000 or more, 6.6 years ⁵.

Those times start from the planning application, so the years spent getting a site into a Local Plan come on top. Once building starts, large sites are built out over many years: 44 to 83 homes a year on average for sites of 500 to 999 homes ⁵.

A field put forward in the Call for Sites has an owner or promoter who wants it built on, and a council assessment that finds it suitable makes an allocation more likely. Check That Field counts both: a site assessed as suitable adds more to the score than one put forward but not yet assessed or found unsuitable. See how the score works.