Chris Loder, the Conservative candidate for West Dorset, is demanding the Liberal Democrats come clean on their manifesto promise to build ten new garden cities. Mr Loder fears that the pledge will mandate the Norchester development - 3,500 housing units proposed to the north of Dorchester.

Mr Loder said: “In their manifesto, the Lib Dems pledge to build ten garden cities. And the developers behind Norchester have conveniently rebranded to the ‘North Dorchester Garden Community’. I genuinely fear Norchester will become a reality. Locally, all we have to do is look to Sherborne - where the Lib Dems U-turned in support of 1,500 homes on greenfield land to the west of the town – to see how likely it will be for Norchester to happen.”

He added: “I have and always will oppose Norchester and the 3,500 homes north of our County Town. But we have still not received concrete guarantees from all the other candidates standing in this General Election, which is deeply worrying. The Dorchester hustings event at the Corn Exchange on Friday 21st June presents the best opportunity for the public to ask each of the candidates their views on Norchester.”

It was also reported this week that the results of the North Dorchester Consortium’s year-long survey, which received only 274 responses, was released. Speaking about the results, Mr Loder said:

“The North Dorchester Consortium are living in a fantasy world if they believe that their shambolic survey demonstrates support for new developments, such as Norchester. It’s a totally unrepresentative sample of 1% of the population in Dorchester and demonstrates just how out of touch these housing developers are.”