Place based interventions are essential to aid recovery from the impacts of COVID-19. We want to help improve environmental performance and enhance Dorset as a place to work and visit. This will be built upon the acknowledged assets of the area. Investment in place will be informed by need, opportunity and the ambition to achieve inclusive growth. This will ensure all elements of the community benefit from an increase in prosperity.
Shaping place will require the collaboration of communities and a broad range of organisations to make meaningful changes. This will also require a clear and positive planning policy framework. This will be established through the emerging Local Plan for Dorset.
Balanced growth will be crucial to improving sustainability and progressing towards zero-carbon. This will require investment in a range of supporting infrastructure, especially to ensure sufficient, reliable and increasingly green power supply across Dorset.
What we will do
- support sustainable development for economic growth
- reduce commuting imbalance in targeted areas
- work with local and national partners to enable prosperity and vibrancy in Dorset’s towns, including rejuvenation of the ‘High Street’ where appropriate
- develop sustainable tourism, based on natural assets, culture, heritage and the arts to emphasise the quality and distinctiveness of Place across Dorset
- lobby for increased investment to enhance power supplies across Dorset
- secure investment in coastal resorts and delivery of improvement programmes
- facilitate community led local development where appropriate, including LEADER type programmes utilising national resources
How we will do it
- enable economic growth in the Southern Dorset Corridor (aka Jurassic Corridor) to improve social mobility, reduce commuting and increase productivity
- enable economic growth in the Northern Growth Area to ensure balanced growth of housing and employment opportunities
- supporting the development of the ‘blue and green’ economies, realising the environmental assets and addressing rural remoteness and disadvantage
- evaluate the benefits of establishing a joint venture delivery body to achieve sustainable economic growth and regeneration of key sites
- drive investment in economic growth through the outcome of the council’s property and assets review
- enable the provision and take-up of workspace, utilising tools such as our interactive employment and commercial database
- link to the development of the new Local Plan for Dorset to ensure a positive planning framework emerges to provide consistency and certainty to underpin sustainable economic growth