[3] There were a number of fisheries on the river Great Ouse at Little Paxton, the earliest of which can be traced back to 1544.
It was in the 1940s that a much large scale quarrying operation began in the area to the north of Little Paxton village.
A parish council is responsible for providing and maintaining a variety of local services including allotments and a cemetery; grass cutting and tree planting within public open spaces such as a village green or playing fields.
For Little Paxton the third tier of local government is Cambridgeshire County Council which has administration buildings in Cambridge.
The boundary of the parish to the south and east is the Great Ouse and to the west is the River Kym.
The A1 Road is Northbound traffic to Peterborough and Southbound to London but this only happens from the South-West of Little Paxton On the eastern side of the parish are a number of disused and working gravel pits.
The village and parish lies on a bedrock of Oxford Clay and in regions there are superficial Glaciofluvial and River Terrace deposits of sand and gravel from the Quaternary period, together with alluvium (clay and silt) from the same period.
The main agricultural land use within the parish of Little Paxton is grassland, but to the north-west of the parish there is a wooded area The usual resident population of Little Paxton (including Eynesbury) in the 2011 census was 3,244 of whom 49.6% were male and 50.4% female;[1] the population density was 1,832 persons per square mile (706 per km2).
The three major industry areas for residents of Little Paxton were 16.9% in Wholesale and Retail (including repair of motor vehicles), 12.3% in Manufacturing, and 11.5% employed in Human Health and Social Work.
On the edge of the village, a derelict industrial site has been redeveloped to provide modern housing on an island in the middle of the River Great Ouse, between the lock and the weir stream.
A variety of water sports including waterski, jet ski, and sailing are available on the lakes at Little Paxton.
With suitable permits, fishing is allowed in some of the gravel pits and on the river Great Ouse in Little Paxton.
It is 1.7 miles (2.7 km) from Little Paxton to the railway station at St Neots which is on the East Coast Main Line where regular services run south to London and north to Huntingdon and Peterborough.
The nature reserve has a number of walking trails and animal observation hides, together with a visitor centre and a small car park.
In 2007 Huntingdonshire District Council announced a plan to extend the nature reserve to more than 700 acres (280 hectares) as part of the approval for further extraction of gravel from the Paxton Pits by the Aggregate Industries.
[22] The Church of England parish church at Little Paxton is dedicated to St James and is a Grade II* listed building that consists of a chancel, nave, south aisle, west tower and a north porch.