Promoting land through a local plan call for sites

A local plan call for sites is an invitation from the council for landowners and promoters to put land forward for assessment as part of plan-making. Submitting a site is not a planning application and grants nothing. What it does is get the land into the housing and economic land availability assessment, which is the evidence base the authority uses to decide which sites to allocate. Land that is not in that assessment is very unlikely to be allocated, and allocation is what makes a site worth owning.

The window is usually short and the authority is under no duty to chase you for missing information, so the quality of the submission matters more than its length.

What a call for sites is and when it happens

Calls for sites run at the start of a plan review and are sometimes repeated at later stages where the authority needs more supply or a particular type of site. The timetable sits in the council's local development scheme, which it is required to keep up to date and publish.

Watch for three triggers. A new local development scheme signalling a plan review. An issues and options consultation, because a call for sites usually runs alongside or shortly before it. And a published statement that the authority cannot demonstrate a five year supply of deliverable housing sites, which tends to be followed by activity. Our note on housing land supply and what it changes for applicants explains why that position matters.

Neighbourhood plan bodies run their own calls for sites, on a smaller scale and with a different assessment. If a neighbourhood plan covers the land, that route may be quicker, and our note on checking whether a neighbourhood plan covers your site sets out how to find out.

The information the authority asks for

Forms vary, and the substance is consistent:

• A site plan at an identifiable scale with the site edged red, and any land in the same ownership edged blue.
• The site area in hectares, measured rather than estimated.
• Ownership and legal interests, including options, tenancies, agricultural holdings and whether all owners support the submission.
• Current use and any previous uses, with dates.
• The proposed use and an estimated capacity, with the assumptions behind the number.
• Access: the proposed point of access, the frontage available and whether visibility can be achieved within land you control.
• Known constraints and what has already been investigated.
• Availability: when the land could come forward, and what has to happen first.

Two fields decide how seriously the submission is taken. Access, because a site without a deliverable access is screened out whatever its other merits. And availability, because an authority allocating for the first five years needs sites that can start, and a site with a tenancy running for another decade is not one.

How sites are assessed

The housing and economic land availability assessment follows the methodology in national guidance, and the questions it asks are suitability, availability and achievability. Suitability covers policy, constraints and compatibility with neighbouring uses. Availability covers ownership and legal impediments. Achievability covers whether development is a realistic prospect, which in practice means viability.

Each submitted site gets a reference and a proforma recording the assessment, and those proformas are published. Read other sites' assessments from the previous plan round before writing your submission, because they tell you exactly which constraints that authority treats as fatal and which it treats as manageable.

Deliverability evidence

This is where a careful promoter separates their site from the pile. An option agreement or a promotion agreement with a house builder or promoter answers the availability question in one document. A letter of interest from a registered provider does the same for an affordable-led scheme.

Add what you can obtain for very little: a water and sewerage capacity enquiry to the undertaker, an electricity connection enquiry to the distribution network operator, a highways access feasibility sketch with visibility splays drawn, and a simple indicative layout showing the capacity claimed is actually achievable at the density proposed. None of this is a planning application and none of it needs to be polished. It needs to exist.

Constraints that remove a site early

Some constraints end the conversation at the first screening, and knowing which they are saves effort:

• Functional floodplain, where development is incompatible with the flood risk policy. Check the flood position early, because a site partly in Flood Zone 3 may still work with a reduced developable area, and a Flood Risk Assessment at allocation stage can be a positive rather than a concern.
• Statutory ecological designations and ancient woodland, where the buffer requirements remove too much of the site.
• Scheduled monuments and the settings of highly graded listed buildings.
• Green Belt, unless the plan review is examining boundary changes, in which case a site needs to address the Green Belt purposes directly.
• No achievable access, including a ransom strip you do not control.
• Best and most versatile agricultural land, which is a disadvantage rather than a bar.

Surface water and critical drainage designations are frequently underestimated, and our note on checking surface water and critical drainage areas locally covers how to find the local position before you submit.

What happens after submission

The authority acknowledges the site, assesses it, and publishes the assessment with its reasoning. Sites that pass screening appear in the options consultation as potential allocations. The council then prepares a publication draft plan with its chosen allocations, consults on it, and submits it for examination by an inspector.

Timescales are long. A plan review from call for sites to adoption commonly runs for several years, and the plan-making system itself is being reformed under the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, with transitional arrangements, so check which system your authority is working under.

Do not treat submission as the end of the work. The site needs following through each consultation stage, with representations at the points where the authority invites them.

Following the site through examination

At the publication draft stage, representations have to be made within the consultation window and must say whether the plan is considered sound and what modification is sought. That is the gateway to the examination, because an inspector generally considers only matters raised at that stage.

Where your site is not allocated, the representation should set out why the plan is unsound without it, with evidence rather than assertion: the supply shortfall, the deliverability of your site against the authority's own assessment criteria, and the comparison with sites that were allocated. Where your site is allocated, the representation should address the policy wording, because an allocation carrying a requirement you cannot meet is worse than none.

Ask to be heard at the hearing sessions if you want to attend. Inspectors can recommend main modifications, including adding or removing allocations, and that is where the outcome is settled. Browse the full list of report types by category if you want to understand what evidence an allocated site will eventually need at application stage.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.