The first draft of the Dorset Council Local Plan, that will affect planning permission and land use decisions for over a decade once finalised is currently under public consultation. As a community, we have until March 15th to submit our responses, and provide the Council with feedback on their first draft.

The Plan is extensive, however Planet Shaftesbury, DorsetCAN and other groups have been working hard to understand, consider and explain the plan as simply as possible. I have been working on understanding the Sustainability Assessments of climate and ecological impacts that Dorset Council is using to inform its decisions.

The data are found in separate .pdf documents. While ‘dclp-jan-2021-sa-reduced.pdf’ attempts to organize and summarize the data, the full dataset was only available in ‘20191008-dorset-local-plan-sa-of-draft-local-plan-appendices-amended.pdf’ which contains 505 separate tables.

I generated the graphic below which shows the Council's Sustainability Assessments data for the 10 options concerning Shaftesbury. Dark red = strong negative effect, orange = negative effect, yellow = neutral or negligible, light blue = positive impact, dark blue = strong positive impact.

Of these, only 'SHAF A', on the very left-hand was deemed suitable for development.

"Whilst there are landscape sensitivities associated with the setting of the AONB and heritage sensitivities around the setting of the listed farmhouse, there is considered to be some development potential within this area."

In a second stage, both sites within the 'SHAF A' area were rejected, as "Development in this area would prejudice the future implementation of the proposed A350 bypass.". I hope this will inspire you to take a look at the Local Plan, talk with your friends and family and let the Council know what you think before March 15th.

If you have questions, opinions, or need more help, please let me know in the comments.