Proposal for 500 dwellings on farmland east of Slyers Lane, North of Dorchester
Summary
- This application is for a remote site, outside the existing development boundary and not in an adopted local plan. It is not suitable, sustainable or viable for large scale development and would go against both Dorset Council and national planning policy.
- The flood risk to homes and businesses in the town would be dramatically increased. The application does not take account of “threat to life” flooding in January 2026. The development itself would be cut off in times of flood.
- Dorchester’s water supply would be damaged and degraded and a new supply would have to be found. Worse quality water for increased cost.
- Sewage discharges into the River Frome and tributaries are at a record high. The application places an unsustainable burden on sewage treatment and would cause critical damage to both the Frome and Poole Harbour.
- The application fails to provide safe access routes for pedestrians and cyclists. It is a car-led proposal with dangerous walking/cycling routes into town and a 40 minute walk to schools and services – contrary to both local and national planning policy.
- The developer has inexplicably failed to complete the required archaeological assessments. A Roman road crosses the site which is also thought to be rich in both neolithic and medieval remains. No mention of it in the application.
- The application fails to assess its impact on the area’s culture and heritage, the main drivers of West Dorset’s £500-£600 million a year tourism economy.
1 – An Unsuitable Site
North Dorchester (368 hectares including this site) is listed as “an unsuitable site” in Dorset Council’s Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment and as such should be rejected for development.
The proposed development in remote countryside is entirely unsuitable, sustainable or viable for large scale housing and contrary to Policy SUS2 of the West Dorset, Weymouth and Portland Local Plan 2015 iii) which states: “Outside defined development boundaries, development will be strictly controlled, having particular regard to the need for the protection of the countryside and environmental constraints.” It is not part of any adopted local plan although it was included in the first draft of a new local plan.
Countryside north of Dorchester protects the town from heavy winter rains and large scale development across this higher ground would pose a major threat to homes and business in the town.
Access via Slyer’s Lane and London Road is difficult and dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists making this car-led development, contrary to Dorset Council and government policy.
2 – Flood risk to homes and businesses
The application fails to make any mention of the “threat to life” flooding events in January 2026 when the bottom of Slyer’s Lane was flooded, motorists were rescued by fire officers in London Road and there was extensive flooding from Stinsford to Charminster.
The proposed development site would have been cut off by flood water and landlocked.
Over the winter months, two weather stations in Dorchester measured 83 centimetres of rainfall. Across North Dorchester amounts to more than three billion litres or 1320 Olympic sized swimming pools. The sustainable drainage proposed for this site is not sufficient to cope with this volume of water. Similar flooding is forecast again this winter and predicted to increase in future years as manmade global warming drives climate change and increasingly severe weather events.
Development on this site would be a huge gamble with people’s lives and livelihoods in the County Town.
3 – Save our water supply
North Dorchester covers the Source Protection Zone for the town’s water supply.
Building on the proposed site and the rest of North Dorchester would damage and degrade the water supply and Wessex Water say they would have to find an alternative supply for the town in order to provide lower quality water at increased cost.
4 – Sewage discharges – a disgusting and increasing problem
Development will increase discharges into the River Frome a precious Chalk Stream and Site of Special Scientific Interest.
In 2025 Wessex Water discharged sewage into the Frome at Dorchester (Louds Mill) STW on 44 occasions for a duration of 644 hours – a five fold increase on 2024.
In total, sewage was discharged into the Dorset Frome and its tributaries for 4457 hours or more than 185 days (Rivers Trust website). An increase in households on the scale proposed will only result in more sewage being discharged. Homes in Kings Road already suffer in times of heavy rain when flood water mixed with sewage discharge bubbles up from drains in the road and sprays their homes.
Increased sewage discharges are of particular concern as the Frome SSSI flows into Poole Harbour, a site of international importance for nature conservation, which is designated as a Special Protection Area (SPA), SSSI and Ramsar site, which is highly sensitive to nutrient enrichment. Of relevance is ENV 2. (Wildlife and Habitats) of the West Dorset, Weymouth and Portland Local Plan 2015 which states: “internationally designated wildlife sites (including proposed sites and sites acquired for compensatory measures), will be safeguarded from development that could adversely affect them.
5 – A car-led application
This application fails to provide safe access routes for pedestrians and cyclists. Situated around 1.5 miles outside Dorchester, it is a 40-45 minute walk each way to the nearest first school along dangerous roads, a daily journey time on foot of up to around three hours to go to school and back at the beginning and end of the day.
National Planning Policy places great importance on prioritising pedestrian and cycle movements and ensuring that conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles are avoided (NPPF Chapter 9, para 117). While the development proposal includes the provision of a 4m wide shared footway/cycleway on the eastern side of Slyers Lane, the proposal does not provide sufficient footpath and cycleway provision to positively encourage potential residents to choose walking/cycling over vehicle use to access facilities in Dorchester.
The suggested cycle route from the proposed Stinsford Hill Neighbourhood includes an advisory section along King’s Road, which does not represent a safe route for cyclists to travel into Dorchester without the provision of a dedicated cycle lane.
This will be a car-led development with between 750-1000 additional cars on local roads along with school buses (at taxpayers expense) and delivery vehicles. For cyclists, the journey is obviously quicker but equally dangerous, especially over the narrow Grey’s Bridge section.
Without safe routes the application conflicts with both Dorset Council and government policy and should not be granted planning permission.
6 – Incomplete archaeological assessment
Dorchester is internationally famous for its Neolithic, Roman – even Viking archaeology.
That makes it all the more extraordinary that in contravention of both the draft local plan and National Planning Policy the developer has failed to complete geophysics, trial trench excavation and detailed publicly available archaeological assessment of the site.
We know from both the archaeological record and a newly published map of the roads of the Roman Empire that a road by-passing the walled town of Durnovaria, from modern day Stinsford to Charminster was built by the Roman army, through the middle of North Dorchester.
North Dorchester is additionally likely to contain both Neolithic and medieval remains.
For these reasons Dorset Council needs to mandate a physical field evaluation and assessment before outline planning permission is considered.
The Roman road is on a new map here: Durnovaria @ itiner-e.org with an article about it in the Nature open access journal Scientific Data here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-06140-z
7 – The application fails to assess its impact on culture and heritage.
Cultural tourism, centred around Thomas Hardy is a substantial and growing part of the West Dorset economy, but North Dorchester’s cultural and heritage connections are ignored by the developers in their application.
North Dorchester was a familiar landscape to both Thomas Hardy and his friend, the painter Henry Moule much of whose work is in the Dorset Museum.
Across West Dorset tourism is worth £500-£600 million annually based on a total county-wide tourism economy of £1.66 billion to £1.8 billion.
The majority of visitors to West Dorset (72%) cite scenery countryside and natural history as their primary motivators, making the cultural and heritage assets of the area the foundational drivers of this multi-million-pound economy.
The Dorset National Landscape, next to the North Dorchester site and covering the vast majority of West Dorset attracts over 10 million day trips and 5.9 million visitor nights a year, with visitor spend contributing £800 million to the local economy.
Before this application is considered Dorset Council should require the developers to complete an impact assessment of their proposal on the area’s cultural and heritage tourism.
On the basis of all the points above we believe this application should be refused by Dorset Council and large scale development in North Dorchester taken out of any future local plan.
Alastair Nisbet, Interim Chair
STAND, Save the Area North of Dorchester.