THIS is directly addressed to the Leader of Dorset Council’s Tory Group Leader Cllr Spencer Flower.

After your recent Cabinet meeting some of your colleagues said they’d like to retain some of its features to save their travel time and expenses after lockdown. All sensible ideas which I’m sure Dorset Council will wish to adopt permanently.

One of the other great issues is to democratise local government in the county through working cross party and collectively to maximise good decision making. Independent Dorchester Town Councillor Alistair Chisholm suggested to you at the beginning of Dorset Council that very form of collaborative working in the new council. Sadly, that met with very deaf ears.

But now as we begin to come out of the worst of the pandemic is exactly the time to re-examine that new form of political leadership. The public appetite for change from the cabinet system of leadership was made explicit by the 25,000 votes in the local referendum prior to forming the new format of Dorset Council.

This has been re-enforced by the plethora of talent and experience that was elected last year. All the political groups have councillors with the undeniable ability to make constructive and telling contributions to the first class running of local services and the proven skills to working within a challenging budget.

A new world is dawning in which innovatory change will become integral to the new realities. While we’re at it let’s change the local electoral system to ensure proportional results which stop one party dictatorships ever happening!

Richard Denton-White

Mill Lane

Charminster