https://moderngov.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/documents/s20916/Dinahs%20Hollow%20Cabinet%20Report%20Oct%202020%20v9.pdf The below just came through to me from Dorset Council, residents have until this Friday to send in a statement, the procedure is the same as asking to speak, i.e. an email to the democratic services team. This link shows the cabinet members, Cllr Bryan as a cabinet member seems the obvious recipient:  https://moderngov.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=152 I’ve also copied our draft parish council statement at the bottom.  Everyone is encouraged to send in a statement which will be greatly appreciated.  William “Thank you for your email. I have double checked how as a member of public you can get involved in the committee meeting. The following link gives that information. I have also copied the relevant section which indicates that the you need to email Democratic Services or ring them on the number provided. I think where it says request to speak also means a written statement.” https://moderngov.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/documents/s15503/Public%20Participation%20at%20Committees.pdf How do I make a request to speak?  You need to let the council know if you wish to speak at a committee meeting by contacting the Democratic Services Team at least 3 working days before the meeting.  Requests can be emailed to democraticservicesteamb@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk Or you can phone the council (01305 251000) and ask to speak to democratic services.    When registering your request to speak please provide the following information:   Your name, address and contact details;   The name of the councillor to whom the question is directed;    The full text of the question or statement in plain English  Draft PC statement: ‘The report still contains the errors that were highlighted before. It states a failure by the landowners to maintain the banks which is incorrect. The cost of this whole project is to cover up a series of poor decisions by the County Council as stated on the Dinahs Hollow Page. The start of the problems was the removal of the signs in 2007 causing HGVs to undermine the banks. Continued by the order and threats by DCC which caused 140+ trees to be felled. The roots of these trees were binding the banks together, and when they rotted the banks on the east side started to slide. The former DCC also carried out tree felling on the banks at Beaminster. It was the outcome of their work their that caused more panic spending. There is strong support for the opinion that DCC have caused these problems and are still making poor decisions that are costing the County’s tax payers a fortune at a time when budgets are stretched. The report fails to acknowledge the fact that DCC contractors carried out stump grinding and removal shortly before the landslip on east bank in 2016.  The soil nail solution is as yet not a long term solution. It is estimated that they will last about 120 years and their installation would prevent the re-growth of the substantial trees that have held the banks for centuries. This council will be merely passing the buck to future generations to spend even more tax payers money to cover up this list of poor environmental management. We have had unprecedented storms and rainfall in the past two years and no further slippages have occurred. This we feel is due to Mother Nature repairing the damage done to this ancient hollow way by DCC/DC who claim to have, as one of its priorities, policies to protect the environment. This claim is shown for what it was, window dressing for a photo opportunity to introduce an excessive increase in the number of county councillors. The cheaper option to mitigate the damage carried out by DCC to the east bank is to put drainage in at the top and leave everything else as it is.  With falling traffic figures across all categories of vehicles, there can be no justification for the spending of £millions to cover up mistakes that will do nothing to improve the overall situation. That is that Melbury Abbas with 5 blind bends and narrow single track sections of road between a 1-6 and a 1-8 Hill is entirely unsuitable to take the type of traffic that successive highways officers have inflicted on it. The general public know it and we know it. At the present time the bubble that exists at Dorchester is failing all of us.’ 

Dorset Highways have resurrected their 2016 plan to fell all the trees in Dinah’s Hollow, re-profile the banks and insert concrete soil nails and mesh, such that no trees will be able to re-grow. A bit of background: at the same time that Dorset Council was declaring a climate emergency, they were busy working as part of a quango made up of counties in the Southwest named the 'Western Gateway Shadow Sub-National Transport Body’ (see their report attached).  This document is a wish list of 15 major schemes costing nearly £2 billion that will 'facilitate' the building of over 110,000 houses just in Dorset and Wiltshire alone (many along the new bypasses). The population and growth projections is this document were suspect in 2019, and are certainly not valid now.   On page 173, you can see listed a 'Melbury Abbas bypass. As the cost listed is only £83M, this tells me it is likely the ‘close-in bypass’ floated by various parties in the past that would necessitate the demolition of at least 6 listed houses in Melbury Abbas.  Of course at this point it is just my well educated guess, as the council tells us next to nothing.  Sadly these elected bodies and their officers continue to equate road building with economic ‘growth', which numerous studies have shown to be a fallacy. See for example: https://www.cpre.org.uk/resources/the-end-of-the-road-challenging-the-road-building-consensus/. Despite the changes we are currently going through, they continue to behave as if we are still living in the 1990s.  Building a bypass is the first step for bringing in more housing estates which make a few insiders very rich, but destroys the countryside these councils claim to esteem.  To back up the claim for an £83million close in bypass for Melbury Abbas, DC presented an Economic Assessment report to the Cabinet on 28 July 2020. Now this is the first stage in getting the Melbury Road Works project re-listed, and this includes the work on Dinah's Hollow.   This work on the Hollow is being considered for approval by the DC Cabinet on the 8th of September 2020, without any prior consultation with the Parish Council., AONB, local residents or landowners. As you may likely know, this 2016 scheme to denude Dinah's Hollow was fiercely opposed at the time by the AONB, CPRE,  Parish Council, Shaftesbury Tree Group, and many other groups. There has never been a slip on the West bank, and the only slip on the East bank was caused by the action of Dorset Highways. We would hope that Planet Shaftesbury would oppose the destruction of the ancient woodland in Dinah's Hollow. There is now an opportunity to transform the transport system to facilitate economic growth, meet legal obligations around carbon emissions and air quality, tackle social exclusion, and protect the countryside that makes Dorset unique and special.  Continuing to waste funds on more failed schemes that promote use of polluting vehicles is not the way forward.

North Dorset Labour has pledged that if its members are elected to the county council on the 2nd of May, that they will enact a resolution declaring a climate emergency in Dorset. This is in keeping with more than 70 other local authorities in England including Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall councils. Find out more at www.labdorset2019.org.uk