Stop the 'New Town' at Great Glen, Stretton Hall & Oadby

Dear Residents of Great Glen, Stretton Hall, Newton Harcourt, Oadby, Houghton on the Hill, Burton Overy, Kibworth & Surrounding Communities

Harborough council and Oadby and Wigston Council are about to rubber stamp a proposed “new town” development of 4000 houses around Stretton Hall and Great Glen, which would have a significant impact on our area. Oadby and Wigston council is also set to approve 2000 houses on adjacent land. This is a joint proposal between the two districts.

Shockingly, only around one in a thousand local residents currently know about this proposal.

The councils seem intent on rushing this through, taking advantage of the holiday season when many of us are understandably focused on family and festivities.

While we acknowledge the need for more housing, this proposal is fundamentally flawed for many reasons: it sacrifices precious farmland, exacerbates overstretched infrastructure (roads, NHS, schools, and more), and ignores viable alternatives like brownfield and urban redevelopment, and risks making the already severe flooding problem in Great Glen (a risk 3 area) even worse.

It is essential that we raise awareness to this now, so residents know what is about to be forced on them, before it is too late.

But to do this, we need resources - need to print and distribute flyers sharing this information, we need to have signs made, we need to fund our website, we need drone footage to show the councils just how appalling the traffic is already on the A6 (both north and south directions) and how this is already at breaking point.

Please contribute to our campaign so we can generate the awareness needed to stop the councils destroying our precious countryside and obliterating our infrastructure.

Every contribution really makes a difference. We thank you for your generosity. This land is precious, our rural communities are under threat, and we need your support to protect them.

Find out more about what is happening, important council meeting dates and press at our website: Stop The New Town Website.

We will share full details of expenditure. When this campaign is complete, any remaining money will be donated to charity.

This campaign is being organised by the Residents' Association, of which Dr Anne Whitehouse is the online representative.