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September 2021 September 2021

The Council budget

The council is currently forecasting to exceed its budget for this year by £8.3m.
(2.76%). However there remains a large degree of financial uncertainty and if the
local economic recovery picks up, the council could start to move towards
financial balance during the latter part of this financial year. The significant
financial burden placed on Dorset Council to deliver services against a backdrop
of increasing need and considerably less income during the pandemic continues
to be felt in all areas of the business. The council has a legal duty to provide
educational support for children with special needs and disabilities and this level
of need continues to rise. In addition, there are more people than previously
forecast entering council-funded care because of the ‘accelerated discharge
from hospital’ programme due to the pressures on the NHS from COVID.

We continue to lobby central Government for fairer funding. Dorset Council has
not had, long-term, financial planning information from Government since its New notecard packs now available from local artist
establishment in April 2019. Alison Debenham

Purbeck “wilder Individual greetings cards of most designs in stock.
grazing”
The Purbeck Heaths are Give me a ring or send
n a t i o n a l l y a n d
internationally important for me an email.
rare and threatened
wildlife. To ensure that the Happy to deliver
amazing diversity of wildlife £6 per card pack
that inhabits the heaths can
not only survive but thrive, a £2 individual cards
partnership of the RSPB,
National Trust, Natural 01929 471780
England and Dorset Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty are expanding the naturalised grazing system at 07970 704277
National Trust’s Hartland Moor and Natural England’s Stoborough Heath to alison@culverdell.co.uk
encompass RSPB Arne.
The project will create a “mini–New Forest” in the area between Stoborough,
Corfe Castle and Arne near Wareham, with cattle, ponies and pigs roaming
across an area of 1370 ha at the heart of the Purbeck Heaths National Nature
Reserve. Different breeds of cattle, ponies and pigs will be used to create the
greatest possible variety of grazing and trampling across the area. By allowing
animals to range freely across a large area, they will both be able to restore
natural patterns of habitat and help to spread different species across the
landscape.

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