I write reference to your December 11 report of 500 new homes north of Littlemoor, and now following your articles of January 26 regarding planning enforcement and Councillor David Gray’s crie du coeur about the allocation of monies.

Since the planning application for this development was first presented five years ago there has been obfuscation as to exactly where the site is by calling the application Litt1/ Litt2.

Other than a tiny kink in the boundary line, the proposed development will be within the Parish of Bincombe and within the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

In other words, without the Weymouth boundary. Bincombe Parish Council has consistently opposed this application from the start, principally to protect the Dorset AONB and the history of this ancient site, but also because of the already overloaded roads and the paucity of facilities in the area.

We have asked many times why a car showroom, why a hotel, why an industrial site and have been met with silence.

On February 20, 2020, I attended an actual, not virtual, meeting of the Southern & Western Planning Committee and at that meeting elected councillors made the decision to, if Section 106 agreement was not reached within six months, refuse planning permission.

That meant a deadline of August 20. Regular checking of the Dorset for you website showed no change even up to December.

Suddenly an email was received on December 15 warning of imminent approval, since confirmed. I now know that the Section 106 was signed on December 4, 2020.

During Covid-19 restrictions, meetings can only be held virtually and the vast majority of council staff are working from home and there is little oversight from elected councillors.

Section 106 is an agreement between a developer and the planning authority, in this case Dorset Council, to mitigate any adverse effects of a development on the local community and this can include landscaping and sums of money.

The Dorset Echo article lists some of these.

Although Bincombe and Littlemoor comprise the local community not one penny, or any other benefit, will come to us.

This relatively large project will have a huge effect on the rural parish of Bincombe.

It will have large ramifications for Bincombe Parish Council which, as a rural PC is grouped with 4 other PC’s and yet we have been excluded from any discussions and, in my opinion, treated with contempt.

Parish and Town councils are at the base of the democratic pyramid and local councillors have local knowledge and that should be cherished, not cast aside willy nilly.

COUNCILLOR GRAHAM BRANT

Bincombe Parish Council