News on Lyme 2030 Vision

Good News! The trial of the Lyme Area Heatmap is being extended so there's still time to share your hopes, dreams, challenges and practical ideas of how we can make our town and villages cleaner, greener, safer and fairer for us all to enjoy our future lives here.

The project's next steps are to hold public events to discuss issues around Energy and Transport/Mobility. Please let us know if would like to be part of the organising team for these events.

Transport and Air Quality issues still top your priorities but it's interesting that the Agriculture and Food topics have picked up interest more recently. Turn Lyme Green has been holding interesting events around this and Zero Carbon Dorset recently held a discussion on the key role our future land use and farming methods will play on reaching Net Zero.

Energy is on everyone's minds at the moment as we dread switching on our heating and facing spiralling energy costs. The Lyme Area Energy Champs are ready to help you identify where your home night be losing the most heat using thermal imaging cameras paid for by the Lyme Regis Town Council, Dorset Community Energy and the 2030 Vision 'Together for our Planet' funding. Our local Energy Champs will have fact sheets and energy saving tips available in our community spaces soon and can be reached through the 'Warm Welcoming Spaces' offered by the Community Cafe in the Hub on Tuesday to Friday afternoons and by the Lyme Regis Library on Monday afternoons or by emailing energychampslyme@gmail.com.

The skillful sewers of Turn Lyme Green's Boomerang Bags project to reduce plastic waste have generously been making draught excluders to keep homes cosier this winter. Look out for these beautiful 'door snakes' using lovely recycled textiles in a range of colours and designs as well as the leaflet showing you how to make your own! Water quality in our rivers and beaches are significant environmental concerns in the 'Other' category and also topped the face-to-event polls in the spring and summer. The latest 'No More Poo' video was released yesterday with a plea from two young Lyme Regis swimmers to South West Water to protect our Marine Reserve in Lyme Bay and stop dumping sewage into our rivers and beaches. The River Lim Action Group and Lower Char Community project team continue to monitor the rivers; liaise with the water companies, councils and Environment Agency to investigate and resolve sewage discharges; and plan clean-up and restoration actions involving the wider community.

Trees and Green Spaces are always popular topics, especially with younger participants. The Dorset Climate Action Network's Great Big Dorset Hedge is a perfect example of a popular, practical response to the climate and ecological crisis that we can all participate in. The GBDH campaign aims to restore and replace hedgerows to improve soil quality, boost biodiversity, reduce flood risk and capture carbon in an expert-led, community volunteer organised mapping, surveying, restoring and replanting programme along the Jubilee and Ridgeway Trails.

An exciting animation project with the younger children on a 'Time Travel' theme is taking place in the New Year at St Michael's Primary School in Lyme Regis as part of our 2030 Vision project to hear their hopes and ideas for their future. They will be teenagers in 2030 so it will be fascinating to see how they will picture their futures here and what they would love the places they live in to look like then.

Please do keep sharing your thoughts, ideas and aspirations for our futures and share the 2030 Vision link as widely as you can, especially to our younger residents. It's their future so let's hear their hopes!

Contact me on cllrbelinda.bawden@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk for any ideas, contributions or further information.

Thanks and have a lovely December.

Belinda