Gary, DPPT membership is open to everyone living or working in the geographical area defined by the boundaries of Dover District Council authority.
http://www.peoplesport.org.uk/downloads/dpptl-application.pdf The local referendum (Parish Poll) was restricted to Dover Town solely because the Localism Act was still a Bill at the time and we had to use legislation dating from the early 1970's as the only means of allowing people to democratically express their views on a single issue of local importance.
The ideas and concepts that led to the formation of the DPPT were formulated during and immediately after the first consultation in 2010. DPPT was formally constituted in August 2010 and was able to participate as a body corporate in the second consultation of 2010. Prior to that time the ideas were insufficiently well tested to be presented as more than the personal views of individuals (they were presented as such from a personal perspective during the first consultation). Without sufficient intellectual and financial rigour and testing the concept could have been dismissed as a lovely, but undeliverable, ideal. DHB have consistently tried to dismiss the idea of community ownership as such, but, because of the process by which the ideas were forged and took corporate shape, long ago lost that argument. Along the way it has been proven that direct community ownership makes financial and social sense, delivers a more efficient method of raising money for long term infrastructure investment and has sufficient support from within the community to both engage and protect the heritage of the port and its future.