Campaign for 'Re-Think' of Dorset Local Plan

Planet Shaftesbury is part of the Dorset Climate Action Network and was a co-signatory to a collective response to the consultation on Dorset's draft Local Plan. We have now received this invitation which is extended to any member of Planet Shaftesbury. Supplementary information including the meeting link was added on 26th November.

To members of 40 supporting organisations who attended, or were invited to, the 1st Pan-Dorset Campaign Meeting held on 13 July 2021

19 November 2021

Dear friends

Greetings.

We are writing to invite you to our second Pan-Dorset Meeting, which will finalise plans for the collective campaign to persuade Dorset Council to rethink the Dorset LocalPlan, with the slogan "Dorset Deserves Better".

This meeting will be held by Zoom on Tuesday 30 November, 7 to 9 PM

We offer below a provisional agenda for this Meeting, and will send papers and a Zoom link before the meeting. Please feel free to bring other people to the meeting. The more organisations we can enlist, the more powerful the campaign will be.

Since our 1st Pan-Dorset Meeting on 13 July, Dorset CPRE and Dorset CAN have been working to clarify the basis for the campaign and, crucially, to understand the thinking in Dorset Council, the scale of the opposition to the Plan, and the room for manoeuvre in our Campaign.

We have held meetings with senior planning officers; posed a long series of pointed questions to formal meetings of Dorset Council; pursued research into the potential for challenging the Government guidance which underpins the Council's drafting of the Plan; and cross-related the draft Plan to the Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy which the Council adopted on 15 July.

This has resulted in a new Campaign Outline paper which clarifies our objections to the Local Plan, details the issues we would like Dorset Council to address, and describes the forward campaign strategy. This paper will be circulated before the meeting, along with a draft letter to Dorset Council outlining our objections and requesting a formal meeting with the Leader of the Council.

Dorset Council planners have been under much pressure due to the extensive feedback to the Local Plan consultation and work on the underlying evidence reports which are still not available.

The responses to the public consultation were not published until 12 October (over six months after the consultation closed) and the planners have yet to publish a summary of their findings. The amended Plan is now not expected until March or April 2022. After that there will be a second round of public consultation, with submission to Government of the amended Plan probably in late 2022, followed by public Examination in 2023.

Despite these delays, it is crucial that our Campaign ramps up during the early weeks of 2022 in order to have maximum impact while the new draft Plan is being prepared.

We look forward to your company at the meeting on 30 November

Kind regards

Peter Bowyer (Dorset CPRE)

Michael Dower and Giles Watts (Dorset Climate Action Network) (Dorset CAN)

Draft agenda for the second Pan-Dorset meeting

Tuesday, 30 November 2021, 7 to 9 PM by Zoom

1. Introduction by facilitator (Rob Waitt)

2, Brief self introduction by all present

3. Status of the campaign, including latest reactions from Dorset Council (Giles Watts)

4. CPRE's current activity in the Campaign (Peter Bowyer)

5. Outline of the proposed Campaign, followed by discussion (Michael Dower)

6. Draft letter to Dorset Council with accompanying Press Release (Giles Watts)

7. Proposed structure of the campaign and liaison between partners (Michael Dower)

8. Next steps, including all partner liaison meetings (Michael Dower and Peter Bowyer)

Supplementary information received 25th November:

25 November 2021

Dear friends

Greetings

Following our invitation, we confirm that the second Pan-Dorset campaign meeting will be held by Zoom on Tuesday 30 November, 7 to 9pm.

The Zoom Link can be found at the end of this message.

The agenda is set out below, and we attach the two main papers which will be considered, namely ::

- Outline of a campaign to secure a Re-think of Dorset Local Plan

- draft of a proposed Open letter to Dorset Council

(Note these two papers have been posted to the Forum on the Planet Shaftesbury website)

The aim of this meeting is :

- to update you on the state of the campaign

- to seek your agreement on the Outline of the campaign

- to discuss a draft Open Letter to Dorset Council,

- to agree on the structure of the campaign, the role of the partners and how we propose to handle communication

Agenda

1. Welcome and introduction by facilitator (Rob Waitt, 5 minutes)

2. Update on the state of the campaign and proposed structure of the Alliance (Michael Dower and Peter Bowyer, 10 minutes):

3. Brief self-introduction by all present, with statement of relevant action so far taken (max I minute each, total 40 minutes),

4 Why we are asking for a rethink of the Local Plan (Michael Dower, 10 minutes).

5. Proposed content of the campaign, including Open Letter to Dorset Council (Giles Watts, 10 minutes)

6. Discussion ... how can the Alliance organisations best contribute to the campaign, and what support do they need ? (30 minutes)

7. Summary and next steps (Michael Dower and Peter Bowyer, 10 minutes)

8. Chackouts (All, 5 minutes)

(2 hours in total)

Here is the Zoom link for the pan-Dorset meeting on 30th Nov:

Topic: Pan-Dorset DLP Campaign Meeting nr 2

Time: Nov 30, 2021 07:00 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84498806996?pwd=aE9TbDRNekN4Q0F3NUpMb3I2RFhYZz09

Meeting ID: 844 9880 6996, Passcode: 395625

We look forward to seeing you at this meeting

Kind regards

Peter Bowyer, Dorset CPRE

Giles Watts and Michael Dower, Dorset Climate Action Network (Dorset CAN)