The town of Eccleshall has grown by 350 homes in the last ten years and now has just over 1,500 homes, with a primary school, secondary feeder school and doctors surgery at capacity, and a High Street that lacks car parking and navigating the High Street can be difficult.

Eccleshall is still seen as one of the best market towns in Staffordshire on a regular basis for its charm, individual house design and High Street, amongst other things.

However with the prospect of four major housebuilders putting in planning applications for over 1,000 new homes across six different sites, this threatens over-development by :-

• Destroying many of the elements that make Eccleshall one of the best places to live in Staffordshire
• Providing little new infrastructure to counter-act the potential growth in population
• Changing permanently the way the town has developed over centuries, by over-development

If massive-scale development goes on unchecked it will ruin the historic settlement of Eccleshall. 

We ask that Stafford Borough Council, Staffordshire County Council, Stafford and Eccleshall's Member of Parliament and statutory planning consultees think again and instead find a way of ensuring that development only happens in a positive way that does not undermine the very fabric of our communities, for example in Eccleshall, Woodseaves and Gnosall.

And that sufficient cross-partner work is undertaken to look at the cumulative impact of any development and that any houses permitted are done on an equitable basis across the Borough with appropriate infrastructure to meet the growing requirements.