Parnham House as an events venue
Parnham House is a historic mansion set in parkland on the south side of Beaminster.  A Grade 1 building of high distinction, it has for centuries been a major feature in the life of the town.  In 2017, the community was deeply shocked when the mansion was destroyed by fire.  Since then, the shell of the building has been standing desolate.  The townspeople were therefore pleased last year when James Perkíns bought the Parnham estate, with the stated intention to restore the mansion and use it as hotel, which would add to the town’s attractions and create jobs.  Recently, he announced his wish to use the estate as an event venue, with varied entertainment, including plays, films, sporting events, live music and festival-type activity, both indoors and outdoors.  These activities would be served by a complex of new buildings, including shop, restaurant and pub.  For this purpose, he has applied to Dorset Council for an entertainments licence.

Local residents have variably welcomed the prospect of these activities, and expressed concern about their potential impacts in terms of noise, lights, traffic and disturbance.  Beaminster Area ECO Group (a Dorset CAN member) has submitted – after much local consultation – a response to the licence application.  It welcomes the principle of an events venue, but points to concerns related to public safety, possible public disorder, and the need to prevent public nuisance.  It stresses the quiet rural character of the area, the limited capacity of local roads and of the local sewage system.  It therefore asks for clear conditions on the licence which would secure limits to the total number of participants at outdoor events, moderate the levels of noise and limit the hours of late-night activity. 

Dorset Council has given planning permission for an extension of the North Farm Solar Power Park in Spetisbury.  This follows the withdrawal after consultation of initial objections from Charlton Marshall and Spetisbury parish councils;  and a recognition by Dorset AONB partnership that local views are already affected by other development and activity, “including the existing solar array, pig rearing enclosures and feeding hoppers, pheasant feeding stations. paddocks and quad bike/carting courses”. 

Dorset Council’s landscape team recognised that “a balance needs to be struck between the necessities for solar energy production against the visual amenity to users of the rights of way”.  The extended solar farm will be able to provide renewable energy for the equivalent of 6,000 homes a year, displacing 8,600 tonnes of greenhouse gases in a year.  (read more at: BlackmoreVale.net)

Arguments based on law, climate and heritage are coming together to throw in doubt the highly controversial scheme to construct a tunnel to take the A303 past the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. 

The High Court has quashed the development consent order (DCO) which Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had granted.  The Minister had made this decision despite the recommendation of the Planning Inspectorate, which advised that the project would cause “permanent irreversible harm” to the heritage of the Stonehenge complex.  After the minister’s decision, the campaign group Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site hired solicitors to investigate the lawfulness of the decision, having crowdfunded £50,000 to bring a judicial review at the High Court. 

When the case came to the High Court, Mr Justice Holgate found there to be a “material error of law” in considering the impact on Stonehenge as a whole rather than assessing the impact on individual assets.  He concluded that the minister “was not given legally sufficient material to be able lawfully to carry out the ‘heritage’ balancing exercise required by the National Policy Statement for National Networks and the overall balancing exercise required by the Planning Act 2008.  Moreover, the minister had failed to follow mandatory rules, including including examination of viable alternatives.

Accordingly he quashed the DCO, while making plain that this was a matter of procedural law, not a judgement on the merits of the project.

John Adams, director of the campaign group, said that “now that we are facing a climate emergency, it is all the more important that this ruling should be a wake-up call for the government.  It should look again at its roads programme and take action to reduce road traffic and eliminate any need to build new and wider roads that threaten the environment as well as our cultural heritage.”
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The World Heritage Director at UNESCO recently stated that a decision to build the tunnel would jeopardise the World Heritage status of Stonehenge.  The Secretary of State will now have to decide how to solve the problem of congestion on the A303. 

The draft Local Plan for the whole of Dorset, published in January, has attracted wide concern across the county because of the sheer scale of proposed development – over 39,000 new houses between now and 2038, new industrial estates, roads and other infrastructure.  In Dorset CAN’s formal response, submitted in March, we pointed to the impact which this would have on the landscape and natural resources of the County, encroaching on the Green Belt and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and making heavy use of greenfield land, including a proposed estate of 3,500 homes on the north side of Dorchester.  It would add greatly to the challenge of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to zero, which is the central aim of Dorset Council’s Climate Strategy, published only 3 months before the Local Plan. 

So, we called on Dorset Council to ‘Re-think the Plan’, cut the number of new houses to 20,000, avoid encroachment on the Green Belt, avoid heavy use of greenfield land, and use more ‘brownfield’ land in the towns.  We followed this with public questions to Dorset Council meetings, receiving only ‘stonewall’ replies from Councillor David Walsh, Cabinet member responsible for the Plan.  So, we decided to launch a campaign to pressurise the Council towards re-thinking.  We wished this campaign to be realistic;  and therefore asked the leading Council officials for a meeting so that we can understand what is driving the proposals in the Plan.   

On 14 June, a team of four from Dorset CAN – Rob Waitt, Michael Dower, Giles Watts and Rosemary Lunt – had a Zoom meeting with Hilary Jordan, Service Manager for Spatial Planning and Terry Sneller, Strategic Planning Manager.  This meeting was candid and friendly.  The officers made plain that local planning authorities are required by the Government to support the drive towards building houses, and must use the Government’s formula for calculating the number of new houses unless ‘exceptional circumstances’ apply.  We had argued that Dorset’s unique combination of scenic, natural, geological and historic heritage amounted to exceptional circumstances which would justify an alternative calculation of housing need.  The officers advised, from experience of decisions by planning Inspectors and Ministers, that this would not suffice.  They recognised that development on the scale proposed would have the impact and implications that we described.  They stated that there may be room for reduction in the number of houses, in the face of public reaction and of continuing studies by the Environment Agency and others.  The Plan will be reviewed in the light of the very wide response to the public consultation : but they could not promise any substantial reduction.

This discussion, plus the answers to our detailed questions which the planners have readily answered, will help us in mounting a vigorous campaign.  We expect to launch this campaign in late July, following a meeting on the evening of Tuesday 13 July of county-level and local organisations whom we are inviting to contribute to it.  We will be appealing, through e-mail and social media, to Dorset CAN members and all Dorset citizens to support this campaign of pressure upon Dorset Council.  If your organisation wishes to take part in the 13 July meeting or in the campaign, please contact Giles Watts at wattsgft@gmail.com.

The Liberal Democrats' spectacular by-election win in a previously safe Tory seat in Buckinghamshire is likely to see the government face increased opposition to its proposed changes to the planning system and potentially water down the more radical measures, commentators expect.
See the comment from Planning Resource website

Comment from Prof. Michael Dower:
"In the recent Queen’s speech, the government stated its intention to bring forward in the autumn legislation to change the current basis of Planning.  Its aim is to speed up the process of giving planning permission for new development, particularly housing.  The central idea is that the zoning of land for development by local planning authorities would be replaced by a simplistic top-down zoning directly by the government.  This would focus on three types of zone – those for growth, with automatic permission for development;  those for protection;  and those for regeneration, where special government resources would be available to assist development. 
This proposal has attracted widespread opposition from professional planning organisations, from local authorities whose powers would be reduced, and from the public.  This opposition is seen as a major factor in the 25% swing in voting in the Chesham and Amersham by-election, through which the seat fell to a liberal Democrat with the appropriate name of Sarah Green.  There is growing revolt among Conservative MPs in southern England, and the government may well be forced to think again.  If the legislation did go through, it would ‘change the game’ for planning in Dorset. "