Dorset needs more homes. That really shouldn’t be controversial. We need homes that young people can afford without leaving the county where they grew up. Homes for teachers, carers, nurses, farm workers, tradespeople and young families. Homes for social rent, and smaller homes for those who want to downsize.
But Dorset has now been told to plan for 3,246 new homes every year – an increase of 81% on the previous figure. Across the proposed 17-year Local Plan period, that could mean more than 55,000 additional homes – equivalent to almost 30% of Dorset’s existing housing stock.
Where is the equivalent plan for the roads, schools, GP surgeries, sewage systems, water supply, public transport and employment those new homes will need?
Imagine proposing Manchester grow by almost 30% without providing a corresponding expansion in transport, healthcare or schools – and with all essential services miles from many residents. It would immediately be dismissed as laughable and unsustainable. Yet across rural Dorset, this is accepted as normal. Fundamental infrastructure gaps are treated as problems that can be “resolved later”.
Meanwhile, the word “affordable” is being stretched beyond any useful meaning. Dorset’s unaffordable house prices drive its housing target upwards – but granting permission for thousands of open-market houses does not magically produce homes local people can afford.
And 80% of an unaffordable market price is still unaffordable.
This is not an argument against building. It is an argument for building the right homes, in the right places, with the infrastructure required to turn an estate into a thriving community.
It is also about democracy – anger is swelling across the county. Every month, we hear from residents and unpaid parish councillors who spend hundreds of hours examining applications, gathering evidence and raising detailed concerns about flooding, highways, drainage and overstretched services. Again and again, they tell us that a “consultation” merely records their objections, without allowing those objections to influence the outcome.
Over the coming months, Dorset Life will investigate how Dorset is being asked to grow, what “affordable housing” really means here, whether infrastructure promises are being kept and how much meaningful control local communities really have.
But first, we want to hear from you.
What development is proposed where you live? What infrastructure was promised – and what actually arrived? Are homes affordable on your local wages? Did you take part in the planning process – and did you feel your evidence mattered?
Dorset must play its part in solving the housing crisis. But that cannot mean accepting almost any development on almost any available field, while hoping the roads, schools, surgeries, sewage works and buses somehow catch up later.
Dorset needs homes, not just houses. We must build communities, not simply meet targets.
On housing
Thank you for your relentless coverage of planning. You must be tired of writing about it, but please don’t stop. What else are ordinary people supposed to do?
We’re constantly told this country ‘has a housing crisis’. It isn’t true! As I write, there are 2,125 houses for sale within a mile of the BH21 postcode. More than 220 homes for sale in the DT10 postcode.
The CRISIS is that so few are actually affordable on an average Dorset wage. If there were genuinely a shortage of houses, these would be snapped up. Instead, many are sitting on the market because local people simply cannot afford them.
Sometime in the last few years, “affordable housing” became a meaningless planners term. What we desperately need is genuinely affordable, well-built housing for local working families.
What baffles me is that we’ve handed responsibility for solving this housing ‘crisis’ to the very companies that profit from high house prices.
There is no philanthropy here – the minute supply starts to catch up with demand, developers slow down or stop building to protect prices.
That’s how business works. So why are we relying on them to solve a social problem?
Meanwhile, planning permissions keep being granted, land is banked, fields disappear and swamped communities grow ever more angry. The only winners are the developers, investors and landowners. The losers are the young families the whole system was supposedly designed to help.
We don’t have a housing crisis. We have a reasonably-priced housing crisis.
Until government accepts the difference, we’ll criminally carry on concreting over the countryside, permanently losing it field by field, without ever solving the problem we set out to fix.
Name supplied, Wimborne
A tile mystery in Blandford
I’m sure most residents of Blandford Forum will be aware of the recent restoration of the Corn Exchange and the beautiful dado of Victorian tiles which was revealed. I have studied tiles for many years, so I was very excited to learn of their discovery: they are from the embossed range made by Carter and Co of Poole, one of my favourite types of tile.
The tiles in the Corn Exchange must be one of the most complete surviving examples of embossed tiles used in an interior. The restoration by Craven Dunnill Jackfield recently won the Best Heritage Project Award at The Tile Association Awards ceremony.
While in Blandford, I remembered hearing about some interesting tiles in The Crown Hotel so I dropped in to have a look. I found panels of blue and white tiles in the Delft style installed on the side of the main staircase. As this type of tile is not my area of expertise, I took a few pictures and sent them to tile historian and author Hans van Lemmen.
He told me that they appeared to be made in the UK in the Georgian era and were definitely of interest. With the kind permission of the Crown Hotel, I returned to take detailed photos of all the tiles – 100 in all – which I sent to Hans. He was then able to confirm that the majority of the tiles were made in London and Liverpool in the mid to late 18th century.
The mystery is how they came to be installed beside the staircase. The Crown was largely rebuilt in the 1930s, so were the tiles moved there then? Could they originally have surrounded fireplaces in the earlier building, as was common for tiles of this type?
If any reader has any knowledge of the history of these tiles on the Crown I would be interested to hear from them: [email protected]
Jo Amey, by email
Go Ruby and Dorset Life
Can I simply thank you for your coverage of Ruby White’s Commonwealth Games journey?
If I’m honest, I’m not really a boxing fan, but thanks to your articles over the years I’ve grown genuinely fond of following Ruby’s progress. I even find myself popping into Else’s now and then to hear the latest news.
I was so disappointed that the Commonwealth Games were behind a pay wall this year, so I wasn’t able to watch them. But your enthusiastic coverage kept many of us connected to Ruby’s journey all week, and cheering her on every step of the way.
She may not have come home with gold, but the outpouring of pride from the community was wonderful to see. Thank you for championing local people like Ruby. It makes our community feel just that little bit smaller and closer.
Glynis B, Henstridge
Where are the rabbits?
Has anyone else noticed how few wild rabbits there seem to be these days?
It suddenly struck me a few weeks ago that I couldn’t remember the last time I saw one. They used to be everywhere – grazing on roadside verges, scattering across fields in the evening or disappearing into hedgerows as you walked the dog. Seeing half a dozen on a short walk was perfectly normal.
Now… nothing.
Curiously, I seem to see more hares than I ever have, but rabbits have almost vanished from the places where I once expected to find a crowd of them.
Perhaps there’s a perfectly sensible explanation. Disease? Changes in farming? More predators? Whatever the reason, it feels as though they’ve just disappeared without anyone really noticing.
I’d be interested to know whether other readers have spotted the same thing, or whether it’s just me looking in the wrong places.
Pauline Wilson, Wimborne
Sixty is not old!
I recently turned 60, and society has appraently decided I am now elderly. I can have free prescriptions. Free eye tests. Various other concessions keep appearing, presumably because at any moment I may need to sit down with a tartan blanket over my knees.
Except I’m still working full time. I’m paying taxes, supporting adult children who certainly can’t afford to leave home and helping parents who actually are elderly. My friends are all running businesses, charities and 10km races. Most of us won’t receive our state pension for years. So why are we still handing out age-related benefits from 60?
People who genuinely need financial support should absolutely receive it, whatever their age. But we need to stop confusing ‘older’ with ‘poor’. If you can afford to retire at 60, you can probably afford your own prescription and eye test. Meanwhile, somebody on minimum wage at 35 must pay for theirs?
It feels like a hangover from an era when 60 really did mark the beginning of retirement. It doesn’t any more.
We’re forever being told the country can’t afford this, that or the other. Perhaps somebody should have a serious look at how much we’re spending on universal concessions based on an increasingly outdated definition of ‘old’.
And while they’re at it, could they stop calling me a pensioner? I haven’t even managed to get the children out of the house yet.
Viv B, Dorchester
CONGRATULATIONS
Congratulations to Moments card shop of Gillingham, who won the national award for Best Greeting Card Retailer Newcomer at The Retas 2026 Greeting Card Retailer Awards ceremony held in London in July.
Paul and Debbie
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