Every village a little bit bigger. Forever.
The government wants to build 1,367,880 homes in the East of England over the next 30 years — that's 45,596 a year — all without committing to any new infrastructure.
Meanwhile, we are at about 2,319 patients per GP, sewage overflows for 55,248 hours a year, 165 schools are oversubscribed, we have a chronic water shortage and hosepipe bans, and hospitals declaring emergencies.
Urban sprawl is destroying our way of life, by insidiously scattering houses across the East of England, without investing in the requisite infrastructure.
Help us fight it.
Housing crisis — real shortage, wrong pattern. How to stop urban sprawl — fewer larger places with infrastructure, not every village a little bigger.
What Stop Urban Sprawl is
Stop Urban Sprawl (stopurbansprawl.uk) is a campaign against scattered new homes in the East of England without the water, grid, surgeries, schools or stations that make them work. We publish government housing-need figures, infrastructure pressure, and live planning applications so the regional pattern is visible — not hidden one parish at a time.
The problem we document
The standard method sets an advisory starting point for plan-making. Held flat for thirty years it is city-scale demand. Under today's pattern that demand lands as bolt-on estates on the edge of hundreds of towns and villages. Each site is too small to fund a reservoir, a substation, a surgery or a station, so capacity is consumed and never replaced.
How to use this site
Look up your county or district numbers, read how to stop urban sprawl for the alternative pattern, follow applications on the planning tracker, and sign the petition if you want infrastructure first.
Towns and villages across the East
Each point is an area the government wants to build new homes and no infrastructure. 630 settlements shown.
Settlement points from the MHCLG Built up area dataset on planning.data.gov.uk (ONS built-up areas). Official dataset map. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.
What's planned near us?
This week across the East
- East Suffolk — EIA Screening Opinion - Reservoir Extension to Sizewell Estate Awaiting decision — decision due 1 Oct 2026
- East Cambridgeshire — Application for the modification of a planning obligation in the s106 agreement associated with planning permission ref. 19/00179/FUM for Redevelopment of land… Pending Consideration — decision due 4 Nov 2026
- Tendring — Planning Application - Erection of 35 residential units together with associated hard and soft landscaping. Awaiting decision — decision due 14 Dec 2026
Sourced from UK PlanIt. Always check the council portal for the authoritative status.
Browse by county
- Essex - starting point 14,075 homes a year
- Suffolk - starting point 5,105 homes a year
- Cambridgeshire - starting point 5,859 homes a year
- Hertfordshire - starting point 9,962 homes a year
Sign the petition
162 people in the East of England have already signed.
Sign the petition to stop urban sprawl. We'll email about development in this area and related updates. You can unsubscribe from any email. We don't sell or share the list. Privacy policy.