Hasn’t it all gone quiet? From Dorchester ’s re-nowned Stratton House Band, an eerie silence.

West Dorset District Council ’s trumpet, so often heard blowing about its own achievements and drowning out the discordant voices of the paying public, is strangely mute.

Even the council leader’s solo – his blog, headlined as ‘an opportunity for a two way exchange of ideas’ and delighting us briefly with its upbeat set pieces: not a peep for over a year now.

What can this possibly mean?

We ought to be hearing the sound of developer Simons making a detailed planning application for Charles Street Phase 2.

We ought to be hearing the names of the store-owners and shop-keepers queuing up to sign contracts for it.

We ought to be hearing that WDDC has sold Stratton House at a price very close to the confidently predicted sum of £3.5million, an essential part of the arithmetic used to justify building Titanic House, its new office block.

It’s said that no news is good news. But, right now, the silence is ominous.

We really don’t want to hear that WDDC, which always knew better than the tax-paying electorate but would never deign to explain itself publicly, might just have got Charles Street horribly wrong after all.

But if that’s the truth, WDDC must call a public meeting and, for once, come clean. We pay for its salaries, its allowances and its grandiose schemes, and we’ve had a gutful of its secretive behaviour.

Most of all, we don’t want to hear that every last taxpayer across West Dorset may now be forced to put hand in pocket, yet again – good money after bad – simply to save face for the handful who ignored the public will, imposed their own, and who have so conspicuously demonstrated a failure of leadership.

Chris Holmes Dorchester