This letter received by Planet Shaftesbury on 13th Dec 2021

Dear friends,

We are now moving rapidly to crystallise the basis of the Campaign for a Re-think of the Dorset Local Plan.

We aim to launch the formal stage of the County-wide Campaign on Wednesday, 12 January 2022, starting with the submission of the Open Letter to Dorset Council.

That letter will be distributed that day to the Press and other media, to all Councillors of Dorset Council to all Town and Parish Councils and - of course - to all Partners in the Campaign Alliance.

Our aim is that the publication of that Open Letter will be the start of a surge of actions, which will build cumulative pressure on Dorset Council towards a Re-think of the Local Plan. That surge will depend upon action by all Campaign partner organisations and by the members of those organisations. With that in mind, we plan to hold a Zoom meeting of signed-up partners on Tuesday 11 January, starting at 7 PM. Before that date, we will circulate a short paper outlining ways in which the Campaign can be effectively driven forward,

So, we now formally invite your organisation to agree to be a member of the Campaign Alliance; and to co-sign the Open Letter to Dorset Council.

(The draft letter has now been deleted - see below for later version)

Please will you confirm - as soon as possible and certainly no later than the evening of Thursday 6 January :

- That your organisation will join the Campaign Alliance and will co-sign the open letter to Dorset Council

- The size of your organisation in terms of number of members, supporters, followers or associated groups

- Your intention to attend the meeting of partners on the evening of Tuesday 11 January.

We look forward with great pleasure to working with you on this crucial campaign. It is enormously encouraging to find that there is a strongly shared wish to secure a Re-think of a draft Local Plan which - in its current form - could do so much damage to the County, fail to meet the needs of its people and undermine Dorset Council's own Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy.

We believe that a vigorous County-wide campaign, impelled by many organisations and their members, can secure a Local Plan which will protect our precious heritage, meet the real needs of Dorset people and contribute to implementing the Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy

Please will you will reply to all three of us -

Peter Bowyer, Dorset CPRE

Giles Watts, Dorset Climate Action Network

Michael Dower, Dorset Climate Action Network

Here is the earlier correspondence which was previously posted in this Forum under the title 'Re-thinking the Dorset Local Plan'

The Dorset Climate Action Network (D-CAN) is working with CPRE to develop a strong case and secure a rethink of the draft Local Plan. Two papers were prepared for a pan-Dorset meeting scheduled for late November 2021. The papers are linked here so that Planet Shaftesbury people going to the meeting, or wanting to be involved, can see them. Planet Shaftesbury has previously joined with D-CAN to comment on the Draft Local Plan.

Following the meeting we received the following letter which encourages our further involvement:

3 December 2021

from Dorset CAN and Dorset CPRE Campaign Team

to All who attended, or were invited to, the second Pan-Dorset meeting on 30 November

What a brilliant gathering it was on Tuesday evening ! 37 people representing a wide variety of organisations across the County, which between them have many thousands of members. We were delighted by the numbers that attended and the passion of your response !

It was inspiring to hear what motivates different groups to call for a rethink of the Dorset Local Plan. It was clear that our aims are shared - we all want a Local Plan for truly sustainable development that keeps our precious heritage and meets the real needs of Dorset people as they tackle the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

The meeting has given us an updated and rich insight into the campaigning that has already been done; and the skills and contacts which we can draw upon in the main collective part of the campaign, which will start in early January. The aim of that collective action is to build up the pressure on Dorset Council to Re-think the basis of the Plan before they produce an new version - which they plan to do in March or April.

At the core of the collective campaign is a proposed Open Letter to Dorset Council, which we circulated in draft before Tuesday's meeting.

Our aim now is to use the precious weeks before Christmas to assemble the Alliance of organisations who will co-sign the letter, and to complete the preparations for the formal Launch of the Campaign in early January. As the next step in this rapid process, we invite you please to send to us any comments that you would like to make about the draft Open Letter to Dorset Council; and the Outline paper which suggests how the campaign should be conducted.

We attach those two documents (links above), and ask you - please - to send those comments to all three of us by close of play on Tuesday 7 December

We will then produce updated drafts of these documents, and send them to you on or soon after 10 December. We will ask you to confirm, by 17 December that you are willing to join the Alliance, to take part in the campaign; and (we hope) to co-sign the letter to Dorset Council.

We will then call a Meeting of the Alliance to be held on at 7pm on Tuesday 11 January 2022, in order to formally launch the main campaign. That meeting will agree the action that needs to be taken throughout the County in order to build up a head of public opinion which will really sway the Council to THINK AGAIN. Please will you reserve that date in your New Year diaries.

We look forward to hearing from you if you have comments on the two documents.

We are delighted to be working with you on this Campaign. From from now on, the momentum will rapidly build. With the energy and passion expressed at Tuesday's meeting, we can win thís fight

Peter Bowyer, Dorset CPRE

Giles Watts, Dorset CAN

Michael Dower, Dorset CAN