Voices is the Dorset Echo's weekly youth page, written for young people by young people

There needs to be more activities in Weymouth, Dorchester and the surrounding area, particularly for young people.

Whilst we have cinemas, there is not much else. The closure of the MFA bowl in Weymouth means that the closest bowling alley is located in Poole or Yeovil – yet again one leisure facility closest to Southern Dorset is either of these two towns.

For those who live in this area, it is not a simple trip to get there like it would be to go into Weymouth or Dorchester.

Therefore, people will travel to these larger towns more often, making Weymouth and Dorchester less visited.

This means that there will be more cars on the road, potentially leading to congestion and an increase air pollution, damaging the local environment.

On the contrary, this could result in public transport fares to decrease due to an increase of passengers. Nevertheless, more money will need to be spent on road surfacing and public transport vehicles could possibly need improvements, or even be made larger due to more people using them.

Clearly, there are more positive effects of improving Southern Dorset’s leisure facilities. I hope that the new peninsular development in Dorset is worth the millions of pounds that are going to be spent on it.

Furthermore, developments in the area could provide an abundance of employment opportunities. For instance, the peninsular development is said to provide 150 jobs.

For young people, there will be more ways to spend Saturdays, and Saturday jobs will be provided in the area, something that has been proven to be fading away.

The cost of parking in Weymouth is extortionate, which is discouraging people from visiting the town.

However, if the cost of parking was reduced, and there were leisure centres then more people would visit the town.

By James Sullivan