Government housing targets for West Dorset and Weymouth and Portland should be challenged – according to one local councillor.

Alistair Chisholm says the district and borough council planning department has accepted the target of thousands of new homes ‘without question’.

“We should ask the (Local Plan) inspector to challenge the number of houses it’s said we need to build by 2036, which is the start of the situation we find ourselves in today.”

Cllr Chisholm, an independent, was speaking during a debate at Dorchester town council about proposals for 3,000 new homes north of the county town.

He said that in Gloucestershire there had been a successful challenge to the numbers with arguments about the damage too many homes would cause to an historic landscape.

He said the same could apply in Dorchester citing the Roman edge of the town and an area which Thomas Hardy wrote about.

Cllr Chisholm said the county town residents had a track record of protecting its history – with campaigners against the railway routes for the town succeeding in getting the tracks moved to protect Maumbury Rings and Poundbury hillfort.

He said that even if the numbers were accepted there was a strong argument against the way the housing numbers were being allocated with the majority just in Dorchester and parts of Weymouth.

“The dollop they have proposed for Dorchester and Weymouth is out of synch’ with what is being proposed elsewhere,” he said.

Cllr Gerald Duke (Con) said he objected to the ‘top down’ policy on housing being dictated by the Government: “What we are saying is that the planning inspector is acting as a commissar in a seige economy, which has to be wrong.

“If they can do it in Thornbury, Gloucester we can do it here.”

Town councillors went on to unanimously reject the Dorchester North proposals warning that the large number of homes would have a detrimental affect on the town and the environment and claiming that, if the numbers were needed, they should be distributed throughout the area to help support key villages.

'Other options should be explored'

The approved town council resolution to oppose the Dorchester North proposal says: “this specific site carries a significant level of risk that it will fail to address the local needs of the town, nor will it produce a comprehensive, relevant, viable and sustainable development that supports the area’s future rather than destabilising it.

“In our submission to an earlier phase of the Local Plan Review, a year ago, we expressed the view that Dorchester was being required to bear the burden of far more housing than is its fair share. We asked that alternative options be fully explored before committing to an approach that places such heavy emphasis on Dorchester.

“We advocated that the required housing numbers could be shared across the district and so deliver sustainable growth in outlying settlements, thereby helping to sustain the dwindling services within villages. There is no sign in the current material out for consultation that this suggestion has been properly considered.

“Nor do we believe that other site options within the Dorchester area have been sufficiently explored or considered fully. We feel that the willingness of the landowners within the area covered by Policy DOR15 (Dorchester north) to see their land developed is the main driver behind the choice of this site.

“The dramatic scale of DOR15 guarantees it will make a historic, step change, impact on Dorchester. It is difficult to see how the town will cope with this scale and mass without fundamentally changing its character. Many councillors feel that DOR15 is merely the ‘easy option’ for planners to meet a nationally calculated, retirement housing demand-led, housing need for the coming years.”