Cala and Burhill's Chippings Farm plan: about 625 homes, half of them affordable, on 85 hectares of Green Belt either side of the A3. Application due this year.

Cala Homes and Burhill Group Limited plan to submit a planning application to Elmbridge Borough Council later this year for approximately 625 homes at Chippings Farm on the northern edge of Cobham, half of them affordable, on a site of about 85 hectares that the A3 Esher Bypass runs straight through. The two firms have already held a public exhibition and run a consultation, which closed on 31 July. (Chippings Farm consultation)

We have read the applicants’ own exhibition boards rather than anyone’s summary of them, and the figures below come from that document unless stated otherwise. (Chippings Farm exhibition boards, June 2026, PDF)

What is actually proposed

The site sits opposite the Fairmile Estate, with the main vehicle access off Portsmouth Road (A307), in the same place as the existing farm entrance, plus a second pedestrian, cycle and emergency access from the same road. The A3 divides the land into a northern and a southern parcel.

Of the 85 hectares, the applicants say 28 hectares would become a Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace, a publicly accessible parkland with woodland walks, wetlands, dog walking routes and play areas, and 34 hectares would be a habitat bank for planting and habitat creation. That leaves around 23 hectares, roughly a quarter of the site, for the homes, roads, village greens and everything else.

The housing itself would be approximately 625 homes in a mix of one to five bedrooms, with 50% affordable across a range of tenures, laid out as three neighbourhoods. There would be a small non-residential building at the centre of the site, called Chippings Place in the boards, which the applicants suggest could be a cafe or a shop and on which they were explicitly asking for suggestions.

On sustainability, the boards commit to an all-electric development with no fossil fuels, air source heat pumps for heating and hot water, EV charging at every home, 10% biodiversity net gain, and four car club cars for the whole scheme.

One point matters for how the council will handle it: this is proposed as a hybrid application, with about two thirds of the site submitted in full detail and the remaining third in outline. In practice that means a large part of the layout would be settled later through reserved matters, after the principle is decided.

Diagram showing the 85 hectare Chippings Farm site split into 28 hectares of SANG parkland, 34 hectares of habitat bank and about 23 hectares for the homes and everything else, alongside key facts: approximately 625 homes, 50% affordable, access from Portsmouth Road, a hybrid application and Green Belt land the applicants argue is Grey Belt.
Land figures as stated by the applicants. The 23 hectare remainder is our arithmetic on their numbers, not a figure they published.

The argument that will decide it: Green Belt or Grey Belt

Chippings Farm is Green Belt land. The applicants do not dispute that. Their case is that it qualifies as “Grey Belt”, the category introduced by the December 2024 National Planning Policy Framework for Green Belt land that does not strongly serve the Green Belt’s main purposes, such as checking urban sprawl or preventing towns from merging. The boards say assessments show the site is Grey Belt “because of its location and characteristics”, supported by a Green Belt study and early discussions with the council.

That is the argument the application will stand or fall on, and it is the one worth reading the council’s eventual officer report for. Nothing has been decided: a consultation held by a developer is not a planning process, and Elmbridge has not yet had an application to determine.

Their housing numbers, and the council’s

The boards make the case that Elmbridge cannot meet its housing need. Two of the figures they use are out of date, and the correct ones are close enough that the argument is not weakened, which is worth knowing before either side quotes them at a meeting.

The boards say Elmbridge’s local housing need is 1,574 homes a year against an old target of 225, and that the council has about 0.91 years of housing land supply. Those match the council’s May 2025 statement, which put local housing need at 1,574 dwellings per annum and supply at 0.9 years, or 1,705 homes.

Elmbridge’s current published position, from December 2025, is slightly different. Local housing need is 1,584 dwellings per annum. Because the 2023 Housing Delivery Test measured delivery in the borough at 79% of the requirement, below the 85% threshold, a 20% buffer applies, giving a five year requirement of 9,504 homes. Against that, the council counts a deliverable supply of 1,911 homes, which it states plainly is a one year supply, and it accepts it cannot demonstrate five years. (Elmbridge Borough Council, 5 Year Housing Land Supply, December 2025, PDF)

The boards also state that 2,395 households were on the council’s housing waiting list between 2024 and 2025.

One inconsistency in the applicants’ own material is worth flagging, because it changes the headline benefit by a factor of nearly two. The exhibition boards and the consultation feedback form both describe the new greenspace as 28 hectares. The vision page on the same consultation website describes it as “16 hectare (40 acre)”. Those cannot both be right. We have used 28 hectares, because that is the figure in the exhibition boards and in the consultation’s own feedback questionnaire, and because the vision page is internally consistent only at the smaller size: 40 acres is about 16 hectares.

What it means for you

The developers’ consultation is over. It ran to 31 July 2026, after a public exhibition on 30 June, so the comment form on the consultation website is no longer the route in. That consultation was voluntary and run by the applicants, not by the council.

The moment that counts has not happened yet. When the planning application is submitted and validated, Elmbridge Borough Council will consult formally, neighbours in range will be written to, a site notice will go up, and anyone can comment on the council’s own planning register. Comments made to the developer do not carry into that process.

If you want to be ready for it, the things worth reading before the application lands are the council’s own five year land supply statement, linked above, and its position on the Green Belt, because those documents are what the officer report will weigh the Grey Belt argument against.

We will report the application when it is submitted, from the documents rather than the press release. Our Elmbridge planning news page tracks what is going through the borough, and if the question in your head is what 625 homes does to the market here, our Elmbridge house prices page has the Land Registry figures for Cobham and the rest of the borough.