As one of the 127 individuals who made a good faith effort to submit an online response to the Local Plan as reported in the Echo on Thursday, I am relieved to see that I was not alone in finding the submission process a challenge.

The website information about the online submission process did not provide respondents with enough upfront guidance.

For example, I discovered there was only room for 1,000 characters of comment, additional comments need to be uploaded in an attached document.

The submission requires the respondent to identify the “Preferred Option” for which comments are being submitted without naming the Options.

No wonder response has been poor!

The Local Plan is over 300 pages in length and 1,000 characters doesn’t do justice to the complex issues it raises.

Dorchester and the surrounding districts face critical development and sustainability challenges – a skew in population growth, economic development needs for a primarily agricultural area, traffic congestion and of course the need for affordable housing.

Sadly, as others have noted in your pages the Local Plan skips over its own evidence and offers little of an imaginative or innovative nature to address these issues.

Advocating for more retail space and for yet another new housing development to the north of Dorchester on prime agricultural and environmentally sensitive land smacks of 1990s solutions to 21st century issues of vital importance to the community.

I for one am glad that the comment period has been extended and hope many others will take advantage of this opportunity.

JANE ASHDOWN

Dorchester