West Sussex, South East

Land in Chichester

Figures for the Chichester council area (786 km²) from the open data behind our tools: registered land by size, planning constraints, farmland quality, the electricity network, brownfield sites, and land that may not be registered at all.

8,084

registered land outlines of an acre or more, 1,723 of them 20 acres or more.

Search them in the site finder →

36

brownfield register sites, 40 hectares in all, with room for at least 758 homes by the council's estimate.

See them on the map →

1,063

plots that may not be registered with HM Land Registry, on our sister site.

Unregistered land in Chichester →

221

outlines that pass the site finder’s solar farm starting filters: 20 acres or more, near a substation, outside the main constraints and the best farmland.

Show them →

Housing and the local plan

In the government’s Housing Delivery Test 2025, Chichester built 124% of the homes it needed over three years: no consequence.

The council delivered at least 95% of the homes it needed.

Its adopted local plan is the Chichester-Local-Plan-2021-2039, adopted August 2025.

From MHCLG’s Housing Delivery Test and the Planning Data platform’s local plan records, which some councils haven’t kept up to date. Whether the tilted balance applies to a scheme also depends on the council’s five-year land supply and the site itself: get planning advice.

Planning constraints

Of the 8,084 outlines of an acre or more, 8 (0%) are mostly in Green Belt. 982 (12%) are partly in flood zone 3, the highest risk.

2,070 (26%) of them are in a nutrient neutrality catchment (Solent), where new homes and overnight stays must offset the nutrient pollution they would add, usually by buying credits.

From the government’s Planning Data platform. Check any site with Planning check.

Farmland quality

27% of the graded farmland outlines of an acre or more are grade 1 or 2, the best and most versatile land.

  • Grade 1520
  • Grade 21,227
  • Grade 33,923
  • Grade 4791
  • Grade 510
  • Non-agricultural1,253
  • Urban274

Natural England’s provisional grades at the centre of each outline. A broad-scale map, so a field survey is needed for any one site.

Electricity network

672 outlines of an acre or more are within 1 km of a primary or grid substation. The network operator publishes spare demand capacity at 6 substations here, about 56 MW in all.

The best 2 km square for a data centre scores 50 out of 100. Data centre site search →

Nearby council areas

Counts are of HM Land Registry INSPIRE title outlines (one title can have several outlines, and an outline isn’t always one field), counted under the council HM Land Registry files them with. Substations are from OpenStreetMap. None of this says whether land is for sale or could get planning permission. Sources: HM Land Registry; MHCLG Planning Data; Provisional Agricultural Land Classification © Natural England, Open Government Licence; the councils’ brownfield land registers; network operator open data; © OpenStreetMap contributors.