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Successes
Thorncombe Village Shop, joint Best Dorset Village Shop 2019 Rupert Hardy
CPRE has been standing up for the countryside independently for almost a century. In that time we have achieved some remarkable successes. We led early campaigns to introduce National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Green Belts and the Town and Country Planning system-all of which remain at the heart of countryside protection today.
Dorset CPRE (established in 1937) has achieved this in recent years:
- Our Sherborne & District Group masterminded the successful campaign to save a much needed Sherborne hotel and protect the high street by preventing Tesco building an unwanted supermarket on the site
- We helped stop the West Dorset, Slyer’s Lane and Blandford Hill windfarms, as well as the Rampisham, Mapperton and Sadborow solar farms, which would all have had serious adverse visual impact on the unspoilt Dorset countryside
- Our North Dorset Group helped save the beautiful Crown Meadows, Land North of Ward Drive, from inappropriate housing development in Blandford
- There have been campaigns throughout Dorset to control littering since Bill Bryson launched Stop The Drop
- We have helped fund the refurbishment of iconic fingerposts and we are supporting Community Land Trusts
- We sponsored the Best Dorset Village Shop competition until 2019 (The Best Dorset Village Competition is sadly is in abeyance currently as it needs a new major sponsor)
- Starting in 2024 we are now one of the sponsors of the annual Dorset Hegdelaying Competition held in September and organised by the Melplash Agricultural Society. We promote the Great Big Dorset Hedge initiative, a Dorset CAN Project, in December 2023 Dorset CPRE Trustees agreed a £6,000 funding request for the Great Big Dorset Hedge project to sustain the momentum as they manage further growth and in recognition of the ambition and potential of the project.
