We're losing our best farmland a field at a time.
West Suffolk and the East of England
What we can show
The adopted West Suffolk Local Plan sustainability appraisal finds the loss of best and most versatile agricultural land potentially significant, spread across the allocations rather than shown as one decision. Regionally the total is visible: CPRE's analysis of development between 2010 and 2022 found the East of England lost 3,232 hectares of best and most versatile land, the largest absolute loss of any English region. How much farmland a home costs is a function of density. A typical estate on the edge of a town reaches 15 to 20 homes a hectare, against the 40 to 60 at which walking and local shops start to work.
- West Suffolk Local Plan sustainability appraisal, July 2025
- CPRE: East of England lost 3,232 ha of best farmland, 2010 to 2022
- Green Alliance: edge-of-town estates reach 15 to 20 homes a hectare
- RTPI: dispersed urban forms use more land per home, 2018
How sprawl adds to this
A field here and a field there never looks like a strategic loss. Together they remove the best soils from food production and from the edge of the villages that were supposed to stay villages. Two things make dispersal the most wasteful way to do it. National policy asks councils to steer development onto poorer-quality land, which cannot happen when the sites are fixed by where villages already sit, and villages sit on good soil. And at 15 to 20 homes a hectare, the same homes take two to four times the land they would at 40 to 60.
What a larger settlement can do, if it is built dense
One place, chosen rather than inherited, can be sited off the best land. That is the steer national policy already asks for and the one thing scattering can never deliver. Built at the densities where walking and local shops work, it houses the same people on a fraction of the fields, and leaves the farms around it whole instead of carved into awkward parcels. The per-home comparison can then be published, instead of hidden in twenty separate appraisals.
What this page does not claim
Fewer hectares only follows if the place is actually built at urban density. A large settlement at estate densities saves nothing, and it still takes greenfield land.
The pattern is fewer, larger places with infrastructure first, not another estate on the edge of every village.
How to stop urban sprawl · The numbers · All cumulative harms · Corrections
We can stop this
We want building concentrated in fewer, larger places with schools, health, water and transport built in — not another estate on the edge of every village.
Sign the petition
678 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.