Page 2 - Andy Canning News Today

DORSET Council’s budget for next year could have been worse – although residents will still face a 3 per cent increase in their council tax and…

DORSET Council’s budget for next year could have been worse – although residents will still face a 3 per cent increase in their council tax and…

THE Highways director for Dorset is to be asked to appear before Dorchester Town Council to explain what his department is doing to improve roads and paths in the county town. The town’s planning and environment committee heard that since Dorset Council came into being more than a year ago a local committee to push forward improvements has been abandoned. Town and unitary councillor Andy Canning, who used to chair that committee, said he saw little chance of it being re-started but said...

The proposal will be explained in papers for the Places & Resources Scrutiny Committee on March 25. As previously reported the move was thought likely with a relocation for staff based at the building to County Hall. The council has already disposed of the Princes House building in the town centre and former district council offices at Furzehill, Wimborne and Norden, Blandford. The Dorchester offices have been closed since the start of the lockdown and even with an easing of restrictions ...

NO MAJOR summer events will be organised by Dorchester Town Council this year – faced with continued uncertainty over the Covid 19 pandemic. The decision will affect the annual Loveparks event, outdoor cinema, the Anonymous Festival and the August Bank Holiday music day. But town councillors heard that Dorchester will not be without some summer happenings with a series  of smaller pop up’ activities being planned for the Borough Gardens and other venues around the county town. READ...

DORSET Council is one of three local authorities in the South West with the largest percentage of assets invested in fossil fuels. A report by environmental campaigners Friends of the Earth and Platform revealed that the pension fund of Dorset invests around 4.49 per cent of the fund’s value into fossil fuels. According to the campaigners, Dorset, Devon, and Avon council pension funds account for 58 per cent of all fossil fuel investments by Local Authority Pension Funds in the South We...

As Trinity College Cambridge divests, UK council pensions still hold £10bn in fossil fuels Freedom of information requests by environmental campaigners have revealed that UK local government pensions held almost £10bn in fossil fuel companies last year, despite the trend towards climate emergency declarations. The requests reveal the pension investment trends of more than 80 UK councils The results of the requests, which pertained to investments held in the 2019/20 financial year, have been p...

Local councils that have declared a climate emergency are continuing to pour money into fossil fuels through their staff pension funds, analysis has shown. Nearly £10bn worth of investments in fossil fuels, including oil and gas companies such as BP and Shell, were found in local government pension funds in the last financial year, according to an assessment by the campaign groups Platform and Friends of the Earth. Councils in Greater...

SCHOOLCHILDREN in Dorchester are to get free laptops thanks to a generous donation. The Ashley, Churchill and Thorner Educational Trust (ACTET) is donating a total of £22,500 to schools in Dorchester to help them buy children new and refurbished laptops. While schools are closed, children are having to do their schooling from home and access to a computer and the internet can be crucial to ensuring pupils are able to get a good quality education. ACTET Trustee and North Dorchester Coun...

An old Dorchester park and Ride sign PROPOSALS for a park and ride for Dorchester should be dropped from future plans for the area – according to town councillors. They say the last loss-making scheme failed to work and was closed down despite being subsidised by the previous district council. Since the pandemic very few office workers, including those employed by the Dorset Council, are coming into the county town to work. Cllr Andy Canning says that council workers are not now expec...