Restaurateurs win home plan battle

The owners of a muchloved Dorset restaurant have won their battle with planning officers and will be allowed to convert the building into their home.

Gerry and Cathy Craig, owners of Le Petit Canard in Maiden Newton, were forced to close the 22-yearold eatery during the covid pandemic.

But after the couple submitted plans to Dorset Council to convert the premises into their home, planning officers argued it should remain a commercial building and recommended refusing their change of use application.

Cllr Bill Pipe joked the French style, fine-dining restaurant in Dorchester Road became a ‘dead duck’ during the pandemic.

Restaurateur Cathy Craig asked councillors to take a “real world” decision without forcing the couple to prove the premises would no longer be viable for a commercial operation.

She told councillors no one had objected to the change of use application she and her husband submitted and that an estate agent had told her it would be unlikely the building would be bought for another commercial use.

Weymouth councillor Louie O’Leary told fellow councillors the council should not be ‘micromanaging’ restaurants and that the council had no business asking the couple to prove the premises were no longer viable as a restaurant. Planning committee member Tony Alford described the planning officers’ recommendations to keep the premises commercial as ‘somewhat curious’.

Councillors were told that more than a dozen people had written to the council in support of the Craigs’ application and that the couple will continue to run an outside catering business, cooking in people’s homes and offering a food collection service, cooked to order, on Fridays and Saturdays –which they first started doing during the covid lockdown.The planning application was agreed by nine votes to one to allow the building to be converted into a fourbedroom home, with a flat and office already in place. The application will allow for only minor changes to the building’s exterior.

Report into second homes council tax move is deferred

Dorset Council’s cabinet has taken the decision to defer the report on council tax premiums on second homes and empty properties to allow more councillors to be involved before a decision is made.

The report recommends that the council should take advantage of flexibilities in the Levelling Up and

Regeneration Bill which, if it becomes law, will enable the introduction of a 100% council tax premium on second homes. The earliest the change could be introduced is April 2024.

A 100% premium could bring in an extra £9.5 million. Another change proposed in the Bill would enable the council to introduce a premium where a dwelling has been empty for a year. The report was due to be presented to the Place and Resources Overview Committee on February 9 before providing recommendations to Cabinet on Tuesday, February 28. If agreed, it will then go to Full Council meeting at the end of March.

Village hall volunteers are crying out for new blood to come in and help make the most of the community asset.

Jim and Sheila Tones say Moreton Village Hall has been ‘very successful’ as a village hub over the years but now it needs younger people to join its managing committee.

Jim, who has been volunteering at the hall for several years, told the West Dorset Magazine: “Until last month we were running a lunch club for the elderly. If you can imagine, four 70-year-old people trying to get everything organised for 20 to 30 seemingly younger people to provide lunch, it was getting to be a bit of a mammoth task and we had to stop doing it.

“We don’t really need anything other than some new volunteers to join our committee and carry on the work we’re already doing.”

Built to replace a crumbling 1920s building, the new Moreton Village Hall is now marking seven years of hosting events, including 56 weddings, 2,000 lunches for the elderly, 150 children’s parties and 84 book and coffee mornings, plus clubs, bands, dances, sports, films, music, choirs WIs, meetings,