Crap TownsBritain's towns, rated by the people stuck in them

Crap Towns / Cambridgeshire / Eye

Welcome to

Eye

Used to make bricks. Now it's covered in them.
Twinned with a field with a site fence round it

33/100Crap Score

Too small for the table, which starts at 10,000 people, but it still scores 33. Higher scores are crapper.

How the score works

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Crap Town of the Year 2026/27

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The public vote. It's separate from the Crap Score, and it closes on 31 December 2027.

Letters from the locals

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Bricks in, fields out

Eye used to make bricks. Now builders ship bricks in and put houses on the fields.

Eye is a village outside Peterborough that used to dig clay and make bricks. The old clay pits are a nature reserve now. The new bricks come in on lorries squeezing down narrow lanes, and the fields disappear under houses.

There's a landfill on Eyebury Road, and the fly-tippers still can't be bothered going that far. Across Peterborough council's patch they dump at more than four times the typical council's rate, mostly on council land. There's 1 Greggs, which for a village this size is six times the typical town's share. Somebody's got to feed the builders.

The editor, looking for the fields

What the score is made of

Ten ingredients, each marked out of 100. Higher is crapper.

Eye's 97 for fly-tipping means it's crapper than 97% of towns.

  • Fly-tipping97/10047.2 incidents per 1,000 people a year, Peterborough council area, 2022-23 to 2024-25
  • Deliberate fires66/100
  • Air pollution60/1007.6 µg/m³ of nitrogen dioxide and 7.3 of fine particles, 2024 average
  • Anti-social behaviour37/10013.2 per 1,000 people a year, September 2023 to August 2026
  • Sewage spills35/100128 spill hours per 10,000 people a year, storm overflows within 1 km, 2023 to 2025
  • Food hygiene35/1000.0% rated 0 to 2, of the 21 food businesses with a rating
  • Serious road collisions23/1001.5 per 10,000 people a year, fatal and serious, 2021 to 2025
  • Criminal damage and arson20/1004.9 per 1,000 people a year, September 2023 to August 2026
  • Broadband16/1003.6% of premises can't get gigabit, January 2026, and 4.2% across the Peterborough council area
  • Rain5/100110 days of rain a year, at least 1 mm, 1991 to 2020 average
Your patch: CambridgeshireTowns in the same county. Top of the table is crappest.
PosTownNationalScore
2Wisbech219th78
3Peterborough292nd70
4Cambridge366th63
5St Ives575th42
–Eye–33
6Chatteris698th29
7March713th28
8Ely744th24
9St Neots811th18

Below the dashed line: in danger of becoming nice.

Eye by numbers

Thinking of moving here? Don't say we didn't warn you.

Crime, muck and dodgy water

What's left on the high street

Getting about, getting online, getting rained on

Peterborough council

Have a crap-off

Eye against your mate's town, and a match ticket to rub it in.

EyeCrap Score 33
v
PeterboroughCrap Score 70

Ten ingredients. One verdict. Who's crapper? The higher Crap Score takes it.