Bridport councillor David Rickard has criticised predicted levels of shopping need for the town in the draft review of the area’s Local Plan.

He said that proposals for a new large supermarket and other shops on either the Rope Walks or Coach Station site was based on the belief that there would be a continuing demand for more and more shops – yet the evidence was that more shops were closing and people were turning to the internet.

“More than 60 per cent in a previous report said they were happy with Bridport the way it is…internet buying increases year or year – to say we know what demand is going to be in 2036 in nonsense.

“There is no demand for a large supermarket in Bridport and access to the suggested site is limited in the extreme. No national company would come in because they couldn’t get their lorries to the back of the shop,” he said.

He also warned that national policy could undermine the next Local Plan for West Dorset and neighbouring Weymouth and Portland which takes an overview of development until 2036.

He said that while the Government was cutting public transport funding and some bus routes were being closed it was pointless to talk about social mobility.

He also called for more attention to be paid to further education – which he said was hardly mentioned in the review of the existing plan for the area.

“We need decent public transport to get to jobs and education – it’s all linked in,” he said.

He claimed that a lack of further education choices and the difficulties of getting around were amongst the reasons why young people moved out of Dorset.

Cllr Rickard was speaking at the overview and scrutiny committee at West Dorset District Council on Tuesday.

He was also critical of planning policy which he said did little to negate the effects of climate change with restrictions suggested in the local plan review on wind farms and solar power.

“Someone wishing to build a passive house in Bridport has been told by a conservation officer that they will have to put chimneys on it. Can we get away from the view that everything has to look the same?” he said.

Planning policy manager Trevor Warrick said that the shopping need figures came from a previous consultants report and that the plan, overall, had downgraded previous predictions of shopping need.

“I accept it is a challenge to find sites to extend Bridport town centre,” he said, telling the committee that other plans for further expansion of the town had been looked at: “But Natural England weren’t keen on any of them so we haven’t brought them forward.”