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conducted by Natural England (NE) who are the responsible body for evaluating BERE REGIS WI
and producing an outline plan for implementation. The four areas are below.
Dorset, which was one of the areas considered, has not been selected. This does
not mean it will not ever happen but in my opinion, it won’t be considered until
these four have run their course which is likely to be between 10 and 20 years. At time of writing, we’ve still to have our first full
meeting after lockdown – a ‘Welcome back’
 Yorkshire Wolds AONB social evening open to both members and non-
members. So, in lieu of being able to give you
 Cheshire Sandstone Ridge AONB an update on that, I asked Google to “tell me
 An extension to the Surrey Hills AONB something interesting about the WI”. The top
result was “5 Facts About the History of the Women’s Institute”, published on the
 An extension to the Chilterns AONB HistoryExtra website (the official website for BBC History Magazine and BBC History
Revealed) in advance of the Lucy Worsley BBC Two programme last year

celebrating the centenary of the Women’s Institute in Britain by delving into its
Lobbying our MPs surprisingly radical history:
We meet our Dorset Council MPs once a fortnight and use these meetings to
lobby for issues relevant to Dorset. Where appropriate we agree that one of our 1) Britain’s second female MP was a WI member
five MPs will act as a single focal point and work on behalf of all our MPs with a
common set of agreed goals. The first area for this is IT and we persuaded Chris Mrs Margaret Winteringham was a member of
Loder to act as a focal point to Westminster for our digital issues, this directly led the WI and the honorary secretary in Lindsey,
to the recent Ministerial visit described in the next item. Additionally Laura Lincolnshire. In 1921 she became the first English
coordinated the production of a briefing for MPs on Social Care Reform (next but -born woman to be elected as a member of
one item). parliament, and was the second female to be
elected to parliament. As a result of her

success, Mrs Winteringham became known
Meeting with the Digital Minister Matt Warman among members of the WI as ‘Our Institute MP’.
On Wednesday7th July I hosted a visit by Matt Warman MP to the 5G RuralDorset
project. The day began at Dorset Innovation Park at Winfrith where the Minister 2) WI members supported Tommies during the
was given a demo of a fully connected emergency response vehicle, which First World War
included drone footage transmitted over the 5G network from Lulworth.
The WI in Britain was first set up in 1915 to
He then toured the Ministry of Defence’s new Battle Lab workshop. This new encourage women to grow their own
facility houses a private 5G vegetables and preserve food in order to aid
network and will allow the MOD the nation on the home front. With sponsorship from the Agricultural Organisation
and small, agile technology Society (AOS) the WI was created, and the first meeting was held on 16
companies to collaborate and September in a garden shed at Llanfair PG on Anglesey in North Wales.
develop new 5G products and
services. The Minister was then By the end of 1916, some 40 WI sub-committees had been set up across Britain. As
taken to Durdle Door where he this number rose significantly to 137 by 1917, the government decided to hand
was shown the new 5G over responsibility for opening WIs from the AOS to the women’s section of the
connected digital signage food department of the Board of Agriculture.
which informs the public of sea
conditions and tide times via By the end of the First World War, 199 WIs and seven county federations had been
data collected using a sea established. This figure shot up to 1,405 by the end of 1919.
condition monitoring system

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