Allotment holders are due to discuss a number of complaints about the support provided by Brighton and Hove City Council.
The Brighton and Hove Allotment Federation’s annual general meeting (AGM) includes an item headed: “Is the allotment service broken?”
BHAF members are due to discuss their concerns on Tuesday (26 March) including
- a lack of inspections
- overgrown and unused plots because people who are not working them are not being evicted
- the 3,000-plus waiting list and £18 cost of joining it
- plot vacancies at an “all-time high”
- site reps being told that they cannot let plots
- site reps’ morale at an “all-time low”
- the 10-year allotment strategy ending with just seven of 83 recommendations completed
- trees growing on plots
- fences, gates and haulage ways not being maintained
- emails not being answered
- late billing with people waiting nine months for their bills
Allotment Federation chair Mark Carroll said that the biggest issue was the size of the waiting list and people being charged to join it.
Mr Carroll said: “This might seem like a relatively minor issue to some but not to people on the waiting list who paid for the privilege to be on it.
“Our problem is that we have no way of alerting people on the waiting list to what is happening.
“We obviously don’t have their email addresses and the council isn’t going to tell them or give us their emails.”
The council said that there were currently 3,547 people on the waiting list after a surge in applications during the coronavirus pandemic.
The largest of the council’s 35 sites, Weald Avenue, in Hove, has more than 700 people on the waiting list for up to five years for one of its 463 plots.
Roedale Valley, in Golf Drive, Hollingdean, has the second longest list with 424 people waiting, again for up to five years, for one of the 264 plots.
Allotment holder Dominic Furlong started renting a plot at the Moulsecoomb Allotments, in Natal Road, with his husband Chris four years ago after co-working with another allotment holder.
Mr Furlong said: “We had inspections – not by the allotment service but by Cityparks. As a result, our site reps have been able to let 13 plots.
“My understanding is the allotment service hasn’t done any inspections or terminations of tenancies across any of the allotment sites for more than two years.”
Kelly Sharp has cultivated her plot at Camp Site Allotments, in Windlesham Close, Portslade, for the past seven to eight years.
Ms Sharp said: “The paths are starting to become unkempt. There are trees growing out of the paths. It’s a shame it’s gone to pot really. Certainly over the last two or three years, the quality has dropped.
“When we first came here it was nicely kept. I don’t think Brighton and Hove City Council is doing its bit as the people who own the site to help people.”
Whitehawk Hill site rep Jane Griffin has worked her plot for the past 28 years but has no way of communicating with potential allotment holders.
She said: “Originally, we would be given a list of tenants, waiting lists and the official co-workers, with contact details.
“Now Brighton and Hove City Council has decided its take on data protection means site reps as volunteers can’t have this information. It means we can’t do anything.
“There are literally three people working in the allotment office. We had the ability to meet people and show them around.
“Now, not only can we not have people’s details, the office arrange for us to show people around but if we’re ill we can’t get in touch with them.”
The council said that it had addressed the allotment federation’s concerns and had inspected The Weald, Roedale Valley, Moulsecoomb, Keston, Horsdean and Patcham, Charltons, in Coldean, Chates Farm, in Hanover, Falmer, Peacock Lane, in Withdean, and Waverley Crescent, in Hollingdean.
After the inspections, 72 tenants were evicted last year. The council said that 8 per cent of the 2,800 plots on the sites that were inspected were vacant including those under offer.
Since last June, the council said that it had held 22 letting events at 20 sites and had processed 253 new tenancies – and apologised for shortcomings including reduced administrative and maintenance capacity.
It said that bills went out more than nine months late because of database problems and that the arboricultural team was prioritising work on trees that posed a health and safety risk.
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, who chairs the council’s City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee, said: “We’re very aware that our allotment service is not currently operating effectively and we’re really sorry about this.
“We completed a review of the service recently and this sets out where improvements are needed.
“We really want to reset our relationship with the Allotment Federation and its members in the coming weeks and months.
“We will be working towards improving working relationships with the brilliant network of site reps at allotments sites across the city, as well as with plot holders.
“We are committed to improving our management processes and to looking positively at how we can transform the service and work more effectively with our wide network of volunteers.”
The council has a letting event planned at Horsdean over the Easter weekend, where seven plots are available.
The Brighton and Hove Allotment Federation’s AGM is due to start at 7pm on Tuesday (26 March) at the Brighthelm Centre, in North Road, Brighton. It is open to allotment holders, co-workers and those on the waiting list.
‘growing concerns’ hahaha yes amazing theres some very quirky writers on this website
Some of them can appear quite seedy though.
I don’t see the difficulty is resolving unkempt plots. When the rep spots a few, highlight it to the relevant department to make an assessment, and a simple outcome is communicated back.
See the bullet point about emails not being answered.
Have you missed that , in your blind support of all things Council?
Nope, I didn’t. You’re misreading. It is a simple process in theory that should not be difficult to facilitate on both reps and council. The fact it is not working, is silly.
Aren’t you being a tad disingenuous?
Unfortunately, disingenuousness doesn’t make sense in this context, Tom, so that question comes across as nonsensical. The word you’re aiming for might be ‘reductive.’ As I said, it should be a simple, straightforward process, and according to this article – is it not.
3 staff, then 2 staff, then 1 staff. Ridiculous water bill cost swelling all money raised… No way to manage abuse of taps (people running taps for hours).
Thankfully our reps are great on the site I’m on but they don’t have the authority to boot people off. Site down from me hasn’t had a single thing going on it for about 5 years. Idk how they’re allowed to keep it.
This looks and sounds suspciously like a long term council plan to neglect the allotments to the point of all holders abandoning them and then selling them off as building plots.
Why else would the Council bother taking over the running of these allotments from the much more efficient Community Allotment Associations?
Don’t they have enough to do without interfering in a system which ran much better before they got involved?
Can’t build on allotments, Barry.
Sadly they do what they want these days. You only have to see what Mayberries Garden Center, owned by Tates, (Oh the irony!) has done to the allotments on the Old Shoreham Road Southwick!
Quite literally. The Day Paradise Put up a Parking Lot!
There are a few major differences though. Mayberries is in a different council, that’s Adur; and Eastbrook Allotments are private land, whilst these spoken about in this article are council-owned.
Some history shows that the Eastbrook Farm Allotment Society, which had ownership of the site, carried out a consultation with allotment holders in August 2002, Allotment holders were given several options.
80% of allotment holders responded; 73% of which opted to release approximately 3 acres of the site for business development.
That’s an interesting point as half of the Ham Field allotments in Adur were also given up for housing in the 1980s. My parents had a plot there but have since moved to Middle Road.
I walk past the Tenantry Down Road allotments almost every day – it seems odd that some of them appear to have been abandoned/neglected for years but there is ,apparently, a waiting list to obtain an allotment.
This issue was raised a few years ago in various media.
Whilst many people think they might like an allotment, when they realise the amount of work continuously involved, some have second thoughts.
Others move away from the area or their circumstances change, and covid lockdowns was an example of getting out in the fresh air, but the novelty wearing off once people are back in the real world again and have other interests.
Others have family illness or serious setbacks, or various changing family and work circumstances since signing up on the waiting list, and cannot now manage an allotment or have the time to cultivate one, should their names come up.
The easiest way to start to sort this out, would be for all those on the current waiting lists to be contacted by the Council Allotment Service to check they are still living here and are interested in staying on the waiting list.
The council need then to remove those no longer interested for various reasons; those who have not responded with phone or written or e-mail communications (warning they will be removed from the list etc. if no response received); those who have relocated away from the area.
This will reduce the waiting list drastically, and then suitable plots for those at the top of the waiting lists will ensure willing and eager gardeners and prospective gardeners to take up the vacant plots.
This should make the ongoing task easier each year, if Council Allotment Services do this each year.
It just needs a bit of joined up thinking – BHCC is sadly lacking in this department
I wonder how much less money the service has than 10 or 15 years ago.
You’d naturally work your way through the list regardless by not doing this additional work. What this would do however would create a much more reliable list; which is good for data analysis, but doesn’t really provide much practical benefit beyond this.
We had the Greens in charge for years and they f all.
I hope they used protection.
Not true. Greens have only been in power for 2 years since 2015.. And those 2 years only happened because Labour collapsed into chaos mid term and had to go crawling to the Greens to get them to take over.
As an allotment holder I have to say the so called lettings system is a total joke. To say its Inefficient would be a complement as the bottom line is only one person makes all the real decisions, one person does all the inspections that can lead to evictions for not following the rules. To some extent this is also run with a to lenient approach if someone is ill. If a plot is not maintained for more than 6 months due to illness then sadly its highly unlikely to get used by that person again. So that persons tenancy should be revoked and they should be kept on a waiting list that allows them to take a vacant plot without being bottom of the waiting list when one occurs.
Maintenance is virtually non existent on sites by staff, we have personally cleared pathways and cut back hedges as supposedly our site is disabled friendly. But our wheel chair users can’t get through pathways a foot wide because the hedge is not cut back, leading to raised beds . Also they can not get in the site with grass growing tall and nettles at entrance way. Vacant plot clearance by the council is basically down to throwing all the rubbish where it cannot be seen. Destroying anything of merit as unsafe and leaving the plots looking a mess. Funny how things like butlers sinks and good tools can end up on marketplace that were left behind by previous tenants. I think sites need running by site plot holders working with the representatives and having people apply directly to a given site. More involvement by plot rep’s and holders to actively run sites plots administration. So much more could be achieved at a given location. The council administration is inefficient and allotments too big a task for what amounts to one person to be in total control.
It sounds like you’ve had some frustrating experiences with the current state of the allotment system. I agree that there seems to be a need for a more collaborative approach in managing allotments, with greater involvement from plot holders and representatives. Direct application to specific sites and more local management could indeed lead to more effective and responsive administration.