The latest shenanigans over Dorchester’s Charles Street development raise serious questions about West Dorset District Coun-cil’s ways of conducting business.

The Brewery Square developers apply to add seven retail units to the already-approved eight on their site. WDDC planning officers recommend approval subject to conditions. Simons, the developers of the Charles Street site, object at the last moment, the day before the Development Control Comm-ittee’s meeting of March 8. The application is pulled from the agenda.

Why not at the very least discuss it? One can understand Simons not liking the Brewery Square proposal.

They say (I gather) that if there are a few more retail units at Brewery Square, this would reduce their chances of attracting enough retail businesses to make their own development viable, and Charles Street counts as a ‘town centre’ area, with priority for retail, while Brewery Square does not.

The trouble is that WDDC planning officers evidently didn’t see it that way, and the Brewery Square project is near completion while (so far as any outsider can tell) Charles Street is nowhere near starting – unless, that is, you count the new district council offices – a 21st century folly.

I should declare my interest. I have no financial or other personal interest in either the Brewery Square or the Charles Street project. My interest is that I vote and pay council tax in West Dorset. I have this idea, perhaps a rather naïve idea, that the district council owes local residents an explanation of its actions.

Why is it clinging so desperately, at our expense, to the receding dream of developing Charles Street?

Professor Philip Hanson Charminster