Proposals for a park and ride for Dorchester should be dropped from future plans for the area – according to town councillors.

They say the last loss-making scheme failed to work and was closed down despite being subsidised by the previous district council.

Since the pandemic very few office workers, including those employed by the Dorset Council, are coming into the county town to work.

Cllr Andy Canning says that council workers are not now expected to return to Dorchester in large numbers with many continuing to work from home, if only for part of their working week. He told a town council planning meeting on Monday evening that when the last scheme was running, council staff were the main users of it, but even then only in small numbers.

He argued that the proposals for a park and ride, near the Avenue Stadium, be dropped from the revised Local Plan and, if more parking is needed in the future, to look for a multi storey site in the town centre.

The last scheme was run from the car park behind the football stadium but current proposals suggest that a field south of the bypass roundabout could be used instead.

Cllr Stella Jones said the site had been floated before, including using some of it for a lorry park with a filling station and café, but nobody was prepared to take it on.

"It is too expensive to have a park and ride…there are options to have a multi storey in the town centre," she said.

Cllr Susie Hosford shared the view. She said that the town did not have enough critical mass to support a park and ride so it wouldn't work without massive subsidy from council taxpayers. She was also critical of the proposed site which she said would not deal with people travelling in from the north of the area.

"It's a massive red herring and we should just take it out," she said.

Cllr Les Fry was almost the only town councillor advocating keeping the proposal in the revised plan. He said that with the difficulty of predicting what might now happen in the future it still might be needed and, if nothing else, could provide space to charge electric vehicles for those travelling through the area.

Cllr Molly Rennie said that the previous scheme was shunned by those visiting who preferred to park close to where the shopping and other attractions are.