Residential land sales at Hallam Land more than halved in the first half of 2026 even as parent company Henry Boot spent £10.6m accelerating planning applications across its strategic land portfolio.
The contrast is the standout planning story in Henry Boot’s 2026 interim results. Hallam sold 556 plots in H1, down from 1,222 a year earlier, while a further 465 plots have been exchanged for completion in the second half.
At the same time, Hallam is still pushing more land into the planning system. Henry Boot says it remains on track to submit planning applications covering more than 10,000 plots during 2026. That is an application pipeline, not 10,000 homes already approved.
Across the group, revenue fell to £80.7m from £99.4m and a £9.8m pre-tax profit in H1 2025 became a £6.3m loss. Net debt rose to £132.9m from £108.0m at the end of 2025, with Henry Boot pointing to the planning investment and increased housebuilder deferred payments as contributors.
Planning pipeline grows as residential land sales slow
The planning side of Hallam’s business is moving in the opposite direction to its completed plot sales.
At 30th June, Hallam had 9,086 plots with planning permission, up from 8,837 a year earlier, and another 21,361 awaiting determination, up from 19,580. Its total land bank stood at 107,924 plots.
Henry Boot estimates that land with planning permission and land awaiting determination represents about £305m of future gross profit, based on recently achieved profit per plot. The comparable estimate a year earlier was about £234m.
That £305m is an estimate of future gross profit, not cash already generated and not a guarantee that every pending application will obtain permission or every consented site will sell on the assumed terms.
An earlier half-year trading update said applications covering 2,747 plots had been submitted during H1. It also gave a blunt explanation for the slower sales side: a number of housebuilders had changed their land strategy, slowing acquisitions, delaying transactions and increasing the use of deferred payment terms.
Henry Boot now expects 2026 Hallam plot sales to be materially below the 3,957 achieved in 2025.
Vistry’s subsequent strategic review provides a further example of changing buying priorities. On 24th September, it announced plans to cut its owned land bank by around 15,000 plots and reduce its South East private-sales exposure, while focusing more heavily on the North, Midlands and West.
Consent is valuable, but it still needs a buyer
For anyone involved in land promotion, the numbers are a useful reminder that planning value and transaction value are connected, but they are not the same thing.
Henry Boot’s chief executive, Ed Hutchinson, says the group has more than 9,000 consented residential plots held at cost and significant value embedded in the portfolio. The commercial task is to turn that planning position into cash as market liquidity improves.
Planning Geek’s guide to planning uplift explains why securing permission can materially change land value. Hallam’s H1 figures show the other half of the equation: even a stronger consented pipeline still needs willing housebuilders, deliverable sites and transactions that can complete.
The 465 plots already exchanged for H2 matter for that reason. They give Hallam a route to some second-half completions, but they do not erase the sharp fall in first-half sales.
Stonebridge shows pressure at the delivery end
Henry Boot’s housebuilding arm is also showing the gap between a planning pipeline and homes reaching the market.
Stonebridge Homes completed 72 home sales in H1 2026, down from 85 a year earlier. The average private selling price rose to £431,000 from £391,000, while the sales rate eased to 0.38 from 0.42 and incentives stayed at around 5%.
The July trading update said delays in securing detailed planning consents were continuing to affect new outlet openings. It also attributed part of the weaker sales rate to higher mortgage rates.
That is a different problem from Hallam’s slower land disposals, but together they show that planning, land transactions and housing completions can move at very different speeds inside the same group.
What the Hallam numbers actually tell us
It would be a mistake to treat one company’s interim results as proof of the whole UK development land market. Hallam is a major strategic land promoter, but its portfolio, timing and customers are its own.
The useful signal is more specific. A supportive planning environment can encourage promoters to spend heavily on applications and grow consented land, while housebuilder appetite for buying that land can weaken at the same time.
For landowners and promoters, that makes permission no less important. It does make the route from allocation and application to disposal and construction less automatic than a headline consent figure can suggest. Our guide to Local Plans covers the earlier part of that route, where strategic sites often begin their journey through the planning system.
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