Enforcing sales conditions

Quintain: our Toolkit contains extensive advice in the Briefing Note on ‘Controlling the build-out of projects’ drawn from good practice which is currently under review. Regrettably we cannot advise on a site specific basis.

Quintain: please refer to our Briefing Note on ‘Controlling the build-out of projects’ which offers generic advice on controlling build-out. You might also want to look at Cherwell DC’s approach at Graven Hill (available online) which sets out conditions for plot sales which are now on the market. Stoke CC also has some experience of plot sales. Both Councils are DCLG vanguards and we refer to them in our Toolkit. Most other vanguards have to date not sold plots. If you want more info on lessons from the vanguards you might want to approach DCLG directly, but we are unaware of anything specific being published. The Toolkit is currently under revision and updates will be published online later in 2017. We cannot be specific about timings.

I require ‘reasonable endeavours’ to do things within certain timescales in my sales contracts however it is unlikely we would ever go to court to enforce due to the costs involved. There would be no pecuniary loss to us for people not complying so the only remedy available is specific performance. We will in future be adding a clause to allow us to buy back the plot at the price received if the build has not started by a certain date but once started there is not much we can do to enforce timescales.