This week’s Dorset Council cabinet meeting had topped 1,000 pages of reports for the first time since the authority came into being in the spring of 2019.

Using average word counts it could amount to about half a million words which would take more than 40 hours if every word was read.

The meeting, at 10am tomorrow, will see a series of reports approved by the all-Conservative meeting.

Despite the length of the agenda and volume of paperwork on past performance the whole meeting is likely to be over within two hours.

The council’s first cabinet meeting in 2019 had just 30 pages of agenda papers, but within a month had reached 300 pages. In October 2019 the 500-page milestone was reached, followed rapidly by 786 pages in October 2020 with the previous record, of 892 pages, set in December 2020. That agenda at the time was said to be the equivalent of the book ‘War and Peace’ by one councillor.

Reports to the coming meeting, all of which are expected to be approved with little or no debate, include details of the council’s finance position; the latest on the county’s care, support, housing and community safety framework; low carbon grants; the Weymouth harbour and esplanade flood protection strategy; the council’s tree policy which includes planting at least two for every council-owned tree it removes; a policy for street naming and numbering and an update of the climate and environmental panel’s work.

Many of the items have been previously discussed by councillors and reported by local media.

The length of reports has previously attracted criticism from opposition councillors and at a recent scrutiny meeting from Conservative members as well, including Lyme Regis councillor Daryl Turner who complained about the excessive use of ‘council-speak’ in reports which he said rendered some items virtually un-readable for most members of the public, not versed in the jargon frequently used in official documents.

Modern agendas are produced digitally and sent via the internet, saving tens of thousands of pounds a year in printed paper and postage, compared to the days when councillors, officers and reporters turned up at meetings carrying bags bulging with agenda papers.

Cut and paste also saves the council a considerable amount of typing. This week’s agenda papers would have taken a good typist more than 160 hours to complete.

The reports have been swelled this month by more than 500 pages of details on neighbourhood plans for Arne, Blandford, Chickerell, Milton Abbas, Portland, Puddletown and Shaftesbury.