Dorchester’s skimmity ride protest, in which developers and planners were paraded through the town in shame, is featured in a new book Property, Planning and Protest by university lecturer Dr Quintin Bradley.
He says: “It is time that we took seriously the opposition to more urban sprawl in the Dorset countryside.”
In an interview with Nigel Kay from the protest group STAND, Dr Bradley from Leeds Planning School says it was protest movements like STAND that first created our planning system which aimed to prevent land speculation stop development that only benefits shareholders and foists all the costs onto the local community.
Dr Bradley says one of the biggest lies in planning is the idea that if you build more homes then prices will come down and they will become affordable. “That’s a complete and utter lie as we can see and the real crisis is the supply of affordable housing – all local authorities have to calculate the need and none of that is delivered.”
Thousands of people have opposed proposals in Dorset’s Local Plan for 4000 houses close to watermeadows north of Dorchester.
A revised local plan is due in 2024.
