Strategic Land (Pre-Planning)
Cheshire

A developer had identified a brownfield site in Cheshire with strong residential development potential — former industrial land adjacent to an established housing estate. The site had no planning permission but a positive pre-application response from the local authority. The landowner wanted a quick sale and another developer was circling. The developer needed to secure the site immediately while planning was obtained.

Land without planning is one of the hardest assets to fund. Most lenders won't touch it because the value is speculative — dependent on planning being granted. The site also had potential contamination from its industrial past, requiring an environmental desktop study. The LTV on unplanned land is necessarily lower, meaning the developer needed to fund a larger deposit from their own resources or cross-charge other assets.

We found a specialist land lender from our private fund panel who had funded similar brownfield sites before. They understood the planning landscape in Cheshire and were comfortable with the pre-app response as evidence of likely consent. We cross-charged a retail unit the developer owned in Warrington to improve the overall LTV position. The environmental study was commissioned on day one and completed within a week, satisfying the lender's conditions.