Below is a transcript of Ed Morello’s comments from a local transport/infrastructure committee meeting from his Facebook page:
“In West Dorset the issue with planning development is not just how many homes we build, but where we build them, and whether they are built with the infrastructure that is needed to support them.
As I have said repeatedly, we need the right houses in the right places at the right price. That means genuinely affordable homes for local people. It means accessible homes so older residents can downsize and stay close to the family. It means not building on floodplains, something that recent storms in the area have shown to be serious and costly.
It means protecting natural landscapes, like the one that covers 70% of West Dorset and it means that when new homes are approved, the infrastructure that is needed like GPs, dentists, schools and critically, transport, must be delivered.
I do want to be clear that housing growth and rail capacity must be planned together. Local transport must be properly joined up and local communities must be given a voice. Buses need to connect reliably with train services so that people in new developments can realistically commute without relying entirely on a car.
When demand increases, supply should increase with it. Ticket prices remain too high and peak time services are often overcrowded with elderly and disabled passengers standing for long journeys. It’s not acceptable, and it will only worsen if housing numbers rise without matched investment.
West Dorset is rural and spread out. We have an aging population. Many residents rely on buses to get to work, school, hospital, appointments and shops. Yet bus services have been cut back dramatically. From 2010 service frequency in West Dorset fell by 62%. Satisfaction with bus services across Dorset stands at just 48% despite nearly half of residents living in areas ranked in the top 20% most deprived nationally for access to services.
Dorset received 3.8 million through the bus services improvement plan, compared with 11.6 million for Devon. It was one of the lowest settlements in the south west. It does not reflect our rural geography, the scale of the problem, our older population, or our surge in business numbers during the summer months. When new housing developments are approved, especially in rural areas, they should come with guaranteed improvements to local transport. If buses are unreliable or non-existent, people will have no choice but to drive.
Properly supported community transport also has a role to play in places where commercial routes are no longer viable. There should be secure grant funding for community led services a hub and spoke model linking villages to key towns can be more realistic than trying to restore full commercial routes.
The CB3 service in Beaminster shows what can be achieved when communities work together, but parish and local councils cannot be expected to carry the financial burden alone. We should also look seriously at pilots for larger roll outs for on demand services. Flexible bus systems can use technology to plan the most efficient routes based on bookings. These services have already worked particularly well for younger people traveling between villages. If it is to work, the council will need technical support and funding to deliver it properly. On demand services should be supported where reinstating traditional bus services are not viable, and the government should provide new centralized pots to community transport funding, which can be bid for specifically to counteract the years of underfunding.
The extra money and multi-year funding from Central Government is a welcome change, but it’s not enough to turn the tide. We need targeted measures to those places who have lost the most before we can start building a more sustainable network. Otherwise, we will just normalize failure.
There is also a sequencing problem in planning. I’ve seen developments where housing has gone ahead, but infrastructure has stalled, sometimes because a contractor, as in the case recently – in Bridport – has gone bust after being awarded the contract that leaves new homes without the transport links, the roads, the roundabouts, as they were promised. It undermines trust in the planning system and fuels opposition to future development.
Transport is central to whether a development works. If we build homes without properly improving buses, trains and roads, we increase congestion and make daily life harder and create understandable resentment. If we want communities to have new – and agree to – new housing developments, we must show that infrastructure will come with it, not years later.”