Swanage Seafront Masterplan

Swanage Town Council are working in partnership with Dorset Coast Forum to create the Swanage Seafront Masterplan.

The masterplan is a long-term working strategy that will provide a vision to inform the future management of the seafront. The seafront masterplan will cover an area from Swanage Pier to the stream at Ocean Bay and it includes greenspaces, seafront areas and beach.

See a map of the Swanage Seafront Masterplan boundary here

During the Summer and Autumn of 2022, Dorset Coast Forum sought views from residents, visitors and businesses to ask what was special about the seafront, how people used the seafront and it could potentially be improved. We had a fantastic response, with 1,045 people completing the survey, 344 engaging with our pop-up events and workshops and 122 people placing ideas on the ideas board. In addition more than 12,000 people viewed Facebook posts and over 4,000 people viewed webpages relating to the seafront masterplan.

The results of the survey have been summarised and analysed as part of a project interim report submitted to Swanage Town Council. The report will be shared with the public in May but as a little taster, here is a word cloud in response to the question

‘What do you like about Swanage?’

The larger the word, the more times it was provided by respondents.

Swanage Seafront Past, Present and Future, 17 November, at the Mowlem Theatre Bar

A drop-in event that included information about the Seafront Masterplan, the Flood defence scheme and a large selection of photos and postcards showing the evolution of Swanage Seafront from 1840 to the present day, proved to be a great success! Around 150 people attended keeping Dorset Coast Forum on their toes! As well as local residents, key stakeholders including The Mowlem Theatre, National Trust, local Town & County Councillors and Cumulus Outdoors residential centre also attended and lots of interesting discussions took place.

Event at the Mowlem Theatre Bar, 17^th November 2022

Logo Competition Winner

The Swanage Town Mayor (Cllr Tina Foster), Cllr Mike Bonfield and Toni Powell from DCF attended St George’s Primary School recently to surprise one of the pupils with the fantastic news that their design had won the Swanage Seafront Masterplan logo competition. We had over 200 entries and a huge thank you goes to the winner and everyone who submitted their entries. The design has been recreated by a graphic designer, Rowena Taylor and will feature on publications linked to the Swanage Seafront Masterplan.

Swanage Seafront Masterplan logo winning design and digital recreation

What happens next?

Dorset Coast Forum are now taking all feedback from the survey and from people who spoke to us directly at workshops and events, to help create a draft Swanage Seafront Masterplan. Partnership is key to the project and as such authorities, businesses, key organisations and community groups, will also feed their thoughts and ideas into the Masterplan.

Then in May this year, the draft Masterplan will be shared with the public to gain further feedback before the Masterplan is finalised in July. Please look out for further updates on social media and on this webpage.

You can also find out more at – Swanage Seafront Masterplan Have Your Say website