A couple of weeks ago, I visited one of our vaccination centres in Dorchester to see first-hand the hard work that our healthcare staff and volunteers are doing at the Atrium Centre.

At the time of writing, our vaccination program continues to deliver the highest vaccination rates in Europe. It was just over a year ago that the Chief Medical Officer asked me to attend a briefing with him in Parliament about a new Coronavirus. The following week I met him in Downing Street and a month later we were in a lockdown.

Eleven months after that day, on Monday last week, the Prime Minister set out a roadmap to finally get out of these national restrictions.
The plan is cautious. If I’m honest, a bit too cautious for my personal preference and I was hopeful that the hard work to get us into Tier 1 at the end of 2020 would release us more quickly, but with the South African variant continuing to be a concern, the Government doesn’t believe that the risk can be taken. The plan gives us the brightest light at the end of the tunnel we have had for the past year.

Here in Dorset, 15% of people work in the tourism sector. It has been a tough year, but we can now look forward to 12th April when the Prime Minister’s roadmap will bring renewal to the hundreds of pubs, restaurants, cafes, hotels and tourist attractions across West Dorset and the wider area, setting the path to sunnier skies and greener pastures with the safe re-opening of hospitality and visitor economy. In normal times, 685,000 overnight trips are made to West Dorset each year, along with five million day trips!

Last week, I joined a number of online meetings about the Dorset Local Plan. It is becoming clearer to me that the Dorset National Park proposal is now influencing the proposal to have developments of thousands of houses forced upon Dorchester and Gillingham and Sherborne as they lie outside the proposed National Park area, meaning we absorb the quota being in the authority area, but outside the National Park. It strengthens my view that we should not have a National Park for Dorset.

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