Despite tourism being West Dorset’s largest employer and Dorchester’s TIC receiving over 180,000 visitors last year, the District Council is looking to cut this service drastically to save just a few thousand pounds!  Two options are being considered – closing the staffed office completely or retaining a much-reduced service with fewer staff, fewer things on […]

Good news for road safety! In the next few months the speed limit on Osmington Hill will be cut.  With so many narrow entrances on to the A353 between Preston and Osmington, and increased use from holidaymakers, the current national speed limit is dangerous and it is welcome news that it is to be reduced. […]

I am delighted to have been chosen as the Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for West Dorset should there be an early General Election. Recently I have been involved with campaigns to save our local Youth Centres, maintain rural bus services, keep smaller local libraries and stop our countryside from being overdeveloped!  I also led the […]

Both Dorchester and Crossways Youth & Community Centres are due to re-open their doors this week.  After the withdrawal of all funding by Dorset County Council two independent community charities made up of local volunteers have taken on running these local Youth Centres.  Crossways will re-open its doors on September 8th and Dorchester on September […]

Despite strong protests and a lively debate the County Council agreed today to give many of its senior staff a substantial pay rise. At a time of major job cuts and cuts in services this seems to me to be totally unjustifiable.  Altogether it will cost tax payers £65,000 that could have been spent on […]

Today I moved near identical motions at Dorset County Council and West Dorset District Council to affirm our commitment to stamp out hate crime.  Both motions have been fully accepted with unanimous support. The rate of Hate Crimes recorded nationally rose by 42% in the week after the EU Referendum. That’s a total of over […]

The District Council has failed again to get any affordable housing for a key central site in Dorchester. News has just been released that there will be no affordable housing at all – not even one flat! – at the old Prison site in North Square.  This is a major failure for the District Council […]

At last a plan is to be drawn up by the Highways Team at DCC to tackle the state of the verges by McDonalds at Monkeys Jump.  The size of the potholes and the indiscriminate way people have been parking is just not acceptable.  Ideally McDonalds would expand the size of their car park but […]

  Today, the Conservative Cabinet running Dorset County Council voted to end our local mobile library service.  Three out of four mobile libraries are to be axed at the end of the year and only one is being retained to visit care homes.  This will remove a service that is vital for people who don’t […]

The County Council today approved plans to make Great Western Cross a much safer junction for pedestrians while improving traffic flows.  The plans include putting new pedestrian crossings on each of the roads at the junction and banning some turns so that the crossings can operate while the traffic flows smoothly in other directions.  Advanced […]