 With the ending of National Service and cuts in the armed forces the RAF’s presence at Cardington began to dwindle and largely disappeared in the 1970s.As a result, the population of Eastcotts declined from 3,675 in 1951 to 1,710 in 1981.The majority of the population of the parish, which was 4,004 in 2016, lives in Shortstown in the northern part of the parish, which was built-in in the early 20th century to house workers from the Cardington airship works.