Although it is unclear what you mean by ‘small plots’, there are a few things to consider.
The Housing and Planning Act 2016 has not yet been commenced (implemented). When it is (possibly by December this year) there will be a legal requirement for your council to make permissioned serviced building plots available to meet the demand for self and custom builders on your local demand register under the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015. As we advise in the Toolkit, this could come from your land or through private landowners following the normal planning process.
Plots which are not serviced won’t count towards meeting local demand. However, if the plots can be accessed from the public highway (eg. align an established road) and can connect to off-plot services such as gas and water then they would be deemed to be serviced and you would not need to service them. If they are ‘locked into’ a bigger site, they would need to be serviced to count towards meeting local demand.
If it is council-owned you could simply sell the land at best value with a requirement for the buyer to provide serviced plots for self and custom builders and promote these through agents, to people on your register and on your council’s website (marketing/resource and capital costs of servicing could of course be recovered from sales of plots). Depending on location the plots should be in demand and should fetch a premium as they are ‘shovel ready’. Alternatively, your council could service the site by using a local contractor and sell the plots directly with costs recovered from the sale.
Our Stoke case study on the Toolkit and other briefing notes, eg. the creation of serviced plots, may help.
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