Councillors agree to spend £2 million to rescue Dorchester development
West Dorset councillors have given the go-ahead to controversial plans to spend upto £2 million to rescue Dorchester's Charles Street development.
The development will see new council buildings, a library as well as a host of shops and flats built on a former car park.
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West Dorset District Council will spend up to £2 million of taxpayers' money to rescue its Charles Street development
West Dorset District Council's proposals were in danger of collapsing due to the economic climate, and the Council receiving low bids in attempting to sell their existing building.
Changes were agreed by councillors, including replacing a planned hotel with 24 flats, reducing the amount of underground parking and spending up to £2million of taxpayers' money to prepare the site for development.
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West Dorset District Council Chief Executive David Clarke said: "The decision the council members have made means that the redevelopment of Dorchester's town centre is another step closer to success.
"It's great news for Dorchester and the surrounding district. The project will bring huge improvements for the county town, new retail opportunities and about 600 jobs which could be filled by local people.
"Although parking at the site would be reduced to 305 spaces under these proposals, Simons are looking at how to create 179 spaces elsewhere, possibly by creating a new deck of Fairfield car park."
The changes has caused anger with residents as no public consultation will be held. However, the new proposals will be displayed for a minimum of ten days to allow people to view the plans.
Cllr Ros Kayes said: "In these tough economic times the Council needs to be careful about every penny it spends.
"The £16 million already spent on offices was never justifiable. I am alarmed that more public money could be spent propping up a clearly inadequate development without any guarantees."
The changes will still require planning permission, while details of the preparatory works will be considered by West Dorset District Council's Efficiency and Scrutiny Committee, before being passed on to the Executive Committee.
Comments
by billcoop
Monday, October 29 2012, 11:06AM
“Either these bureaucrats are corrupt or incompetent, and given that they have arranged things over generations so that they are never at fault, it's hard to believe that this followed their normal process. Anybody who has tried to raise a complaint with the Ombudsman will know that their rules come before logic, and that they can do what they like without real consequence, so how have they messed up so badly. Well Mr Clarke has a history of messing up: he destroyed a beach in Lyme Regis that took thousands of years to create, and the reason was money. A pile of pebbles as dumped on the beach as a breakwater and to stabilise the Cart Rd "with their huge weight": I quote from an engineer on the project when he was interviewed by the program Coast. I personally talked to the chief engineer and he backed off this ridiculous statement because he understood the pebbles are a Newtonian fluid.
To do a proper job the rock armour or the breakwater should have been extended, but this would have been more expensive. The result is that a whole village has had the wool pulled over their eyes, and a beach destroyed. Bureaucratic ignorance maybe, but not so with the chief engineer. A councillor even stated in the paper that she "didn't like the smell of this", and yet we assume honest ignorance! I think it's daft to assume there is no corruption in Local
Government, it doesn't happen anywhere else in public life.”