BBC Dorset

A planning inquiry will be held in January to decide if a retirement complex should be built after the proposal was rejected by a council.Churchill Living's development would include 48 apartments, 25 cottages, communal facilities and car parking in South Street in Bridport.Dorset Council refused to give permission in March after it said the plan failed to provide "an inclusive, safe and accessible pedestrian environment for all".The inquiry, presided over by a planning inspector, will be held in…

A church bell cast nearly 400 years ago will fall silent for six months in its quatercentenary year as vital repair work begins on a 15th-century bell tower.The £100,000 scheme to address damp and replace eroded stonework at St John the Baptist in Spetisbury, Dorset, follows a two-year fundraising effort by parishioners.The heaviest of six bells in the tower weighs 0.9 tonnes (1,900lbs), measures 110cm in diameter (44in), and an inscription shows it was cast in 1626.To mark…

Test your knowledge of news from Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight with our quiz. Source link

Tristan PascoeDorset political reporterBBCNew Forest Bloodhounds' joint master Will Day met members in Brockenhurst for their Boxing Day meet As Boxing Day hunt meetings take place across the country, a Hampshire group said it is relieved to be excluded from plans to tighten the hunting ban.Labour introduced a ban on fox hunting 20 years ago and its 2024 manifesto included a pledge to extend the current legislation to include trail hunting. Earlier this week the government announced it…

An apprentice electrician whose work placement fell through is back on track with her studies after receiving an "insane" response to a social media plea for help.Sophia Hunt,18, was in the first year of her apprenticeship at Bournemouth and Poole College in Dorset last year when her placement company let her down, just before Christmas.Without an employer, she would have had to restart her course, so her mother sent a message on social media "in sheer panic", receiving…

Thousands of stories have been published across the Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Dorset pages in 2025 - but how many do you remember?Take our quiz below to see how well you've been paying attention to some of the most read, talked about, or downright unusual, happenings in the south of England in the past year. Source link