A COUNTRYSIDE charity claims tens of thousands of residents are not being properly considered after Dorset Council published public feedback to its Local Plan (LP).

Around 30,500 new homes are proposed for the county by 2038 - although Dorset Council has said the plan is to find land for 39,000 houses.

CPRE, the countryside charity, said the recently published summary of responses to the draft Local Plan has revealed overwhelming opposition to the council’s housing strategy - but claims the numbers have been 'disguised' to show a misleadingly low number of responses.

The charity claims this was because the submission of each town and parish council was recorded as a single response and by incorrect categorisation.

Peter Bowyer, the Chairman of Trustees of Dorset CPRE, said: "Our analysis of the LP was made much more difficult since each response was filed under the name of the respondent.

"This is fine for individual people but the 'Parish Clerk of, for example, Corfe Mullen', is responding on behalf of 10,000 residents and the Town Clerk of Dorchester represents over 21,000.

"All of this seems like an effort to hide the reality, or at best it is a poor collation."

The charity said discovering the true scale of opposition to the LP is further complicated by the fact that responses are recorded in the name of individuals, rather than their organisations.

CPRE said it had identified the representatives of a further 124,000 residents of Dorset towns and villages, who do not agree with the housing proposals.