Dorset news, what's on and local information

Dorset Council covers everything the Bournemouth conurbation does not, which is a very large and very rural authority with no single town at the middle of it. Dorchester is the county town and where the council is based. Weymouth is the largest place. Sherborne, Shaftesbury, Gillingham and Sturminster Newton are up in the north around the Blackmore Vale, Bridport and Lyme Regis are out west, Blandford Forum sits in the middle, and Wimborne, Ferndown, Verwood and Swanage are east and south.

The Dorset Post reports what the record shows across all of it. One council makes the decisions on planning, bins, parking and council tax for the lot, and publishes the evidence where hardly anybody reads it. We read it and write down what it says, with a link to the document on every fact.

Start here

• Dorset house prices: the £326,381 county average, and what the middle home actually sold for in nineteen towns from Portland to the Hampshire border.
• Trains to London: Gillingham reaches Waterloo in 2h 07m for £8,212 a year, Weymouth takes 2h 51m and costs £10,260.
• Roadworks and travel: what is dug up and when, the A35 speed cameras, the chain ferry and the Weymouth park and ride.
• Things to do in Dorset: checked 2026 prices, from free hillforts to a £15 car park at Durdle Door.
• Planning news: 2.53 years of housing land against the five required, and a Local Plan that will not be adopted until 2029.

How the site is laid out

• Local Info: house prices, trains, roadworks and planning for the Dorset Council area.
• News: the public record, from the Vale to the coast.
• What’s On: what is on across the county this week.

Every fact is linked to the document it came from.