When I first joined my current club, there were 3 divisions in our league - that's since dropped down to 2, and only this season we've seen a couple of teams drop down to just the 1 team.
It's bolstered our second division which our seconds play in (my team) but we seem to be quite a closed shop - no new teams have entered our league for years.
Hopefully with our league now being part of the pyramid system this will change - but I reserve judgement because our league is Win / Lose, whereas the one above is timed.
Having played Win / Lose cricket all my life, I'm not sure whether the clubs in our league would be happy to change that.