LIZ Godolphin’s letter yesterday (Waste of Money, Letters April 14) was helpful and enables me to give clarification.

We totally agree it’s a shame residents must pay £95,000 for a referendum The council knew by October 2015 that signatures were already over 6,000 (requirement 4,069).

They could have changed voluntarily – as Canterbury did – avoiding petition/referendum costs.

But we had to act to stop other wastes: for example, how did the council agree to a ‘£250,000 loan’ to developer Simons, and recently announce they’re keeping it?

That's nearly three times the cost of the referendum, before looking at, for example, the £2milion shortfall against promise for sale of the old council offices.

Who is aware of the referendum?

The team has distributed leaflets to 22,000 homes so far and aim for over 30,000 by next week – there’s high awareness and enthusiasm.

One cautionary note …many, many people haven’t noticed on their poll cards that the referendum is mentioned beneath the police commissioner election. Please tell friends.

What’s proposed?

I’ll try to get a leaflet to your correspondent, but it’s on publicfirstgroup.co.uk, where under Latest Campaign News one can also see Dorset Echo’s article last week on the striking Draft Report by the council’s auditors, SWAP, and a link to the WDDC website with the crystal clear analysis of how things have/have not been working.

We’ve just announced an urgent public meeting at 7pm on Thursday, April 28, at the Corn Exchange Dorchester on it. Do come!

Let’s all vote, whichever way, and non-party-politically, as it’s a vital ‘system’ issue.

John Grantham

Public First Group