Bridport Town Councillors once again objected to the plans for Vearse Farm at their plans’ meeting on Monday.

They were discussing amended plans and in particular pedestrian and cycle links on to West Road, Broad Lane and Magdalene Lane and two vehicular accesses from the B3162.

They heard from Advearse campaigners Richard Frear, Barry Bates and Philip Carney about their objections.

The group has compiled a dossier of their concerns which includes photographs of the narrow pavements around the site and into town.

The dossier will go to all West Dorset District Councillors ahead of their meeting in October.

Mr Carney said: “This development will create too much traffic, especially as most of the bus services listed in Hallam’s (the developers) reports no longer exist. So the new residents are to be urged to walk or cycle everywhere.

“Hallam repeatedly state that there are good pedestrian connections to the south of the site but Broad Lane is only four metres wide, has no footpaths, no verges and no streetlights. To encourage hundreds of pedestrians to use it is madness.

“On West Road there will be children and parents with pushchairs going to and from the new school.

“There is no footpath on the south side and the one on the north side is less than one metre wide. In places it is not even wide enough for two people to pass and one has to step into the road.

“To the east there is to be a mixed use footpath and cycle way through the the flood zone up a steep, narrow ramp to Magdalen Lane.

“Mixing pedestrians, pushchair users, mobility scooter drivers and cyclists like that is irresponsible.”

Mr Bate said the issue of reducing pavement widths would have an impact on disabled people in Bridport and no equality assessment had been done by West Dorset District Council. He said he had heard planning officer Andrew Martin say it was ‘unthinkable’ for West Dorset to reject the development.

Mr Bates said: “Nothing should be unthinkable in an intelligent, democratic society.

“If Vearse Farm is wrong, it is wrong. It may be inconvenient for West Dorset to have a big hole in their housing numbers but if it is wrong and not a viable project the quicker West Dorset realise it the better.”

Cllr Rickard said he was very unhappy about the piecemeal nature of the applications.

He said: “If this is supposed to be an improved plan it hasn’t been improved in my opinion.”

He said how the access and transport was going to fit in with Bridport hadn’t been addressed.

“If more and more planning applications go through in favour there will be a critical mass of plans approved that it will be almost impossible to get these bits of detail actually sorted out.”

He said the infrastructure to take people into Bridport from the new development would need to be addressed before people moved in.

He added: “We have no confidence that will happen given the cut backs in district and county over last few years. We can’t even get some dropped curbs we asked for years ago done.

“What chance have we got of getting the whole of Magdalen Lane sorted out. It is pie in the sky. “That has to be a real condition of us giving our consent to this and they haven’t done it.”

Councillors agreed to object to the plans because the access routes into the site were not adequate for the size and scale of development.