Should Councils Provide Allotments By Law?

A cross party group of MP’s is backing Banbury Conservative member Tony Baldry in a bid to bring in a law to make local councils provide more allotments, and, more importantly, to make developers provide allotments when they are given planning permission for larger projects.

It is this last clause that could provide more land for the growing number of people queuing up to have their own allotment. The combination of food scares and a new found taste for real food has meant that in London alone there is a cross capital waiting list of 4,500 people. On my own allotments in East Acton, West London, the list is over seventy.

Tony Baldry says that he has an allotment near Banbury station. He is backed by Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, who has an allotment in Islington, and that excellent Labour veteran Gwyneth Dunwoody - whom I last met supporting a meeting of the Soil Association in London, and jolly outspoken she was in favour of good and wholesome food.

This is when Parliament is seen to be at its democratic best, as a group of similar minded MP’s get behind one Parliamentary Bill, and hopefully turn it into an Act, and therefore lawful.

Baldry points out that a century after the passing of the Allotments Act in 1908, we should all champion allotments on grounds of health, the environment, community relations and ethnic diversity.

"Allotments have long been enshrined in the law," Baldry said as he explained the background to his Bill.  "The General Enclosure Act in 1845 enabled allotments to provide fresh fruit and vegetables for the ‘landless poor’."

He said that the profile of people working allotments had changed over the years, with women and young families becoming increasingly active, and ethnic minorities very keen to grow their own vegetables.

The 1908 Act still makes local authorities provide allotments, and also states that local authorities must compulsorily purchase land to provide allotments if there is a big demand. This, of course, has not happened. In London the boroughs of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea provide no allotments at all, and my own borough of Hammersmith and Fulham provide hardly any.  Stories of battles to save allotment land across Britain are all too prevalent.

Tony Baldry points out: “Under section 3 of the allotments Act 1925, there used to be a requirement for every local authority preparing a town planning scheme in pursuance of the Town Planning Act 1925 to consider what provision ought to be included  for the reservation of land for allotments.  At one stage once a year, every local authority in England had to consider whether it was making a sufficient allocation with enough space for allotments.  Alas, when the 1925 Act was repealed, that provision to consider the needs for new allotments was also lost."

Baldry says that his Bill seeks to redress the balance. He admits that even when councils want to provide allotments it is not easy for them to find and buy the land. He singles out Bicester a town in his own constituency where Debbie Pickford, leader of the council, wants more allotments but cannot afford the price of the land. And local authorities have been encouraged to cash in any extra land they owned over the past few years, thus removing any chance of providing more allotments.

Baldry recalls that in 2006 in the House of Lords Baroness Andrews, a planning minister, confirmed in response to Baroness Scott of Needham Market, that Section 106 agreements have enabled developers to make provision for allotments.

This is a grey part of planning law where for the right to build a supermarket or something else the developer will offer the council planners free roads, roundabouts, even housing, in return for the go ahead. But these planning agreements Baldry feels should be properly legalized. Their should be a legal requirement for open space to be provided.

Last week I reported on London’s four would-be mayors and their environmental policies. Jon Snow allowed me to ask the only media question. Mayor Livingstone said he would like powers to stop allotments being closed. The very nerve of the man when he removed at a stroke of his pen the 100 year old Manor Gardens allotments to make way for a concrete path to the alleged green Olympics. But Sian Berry (Green Party) Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrat) and especially Boris Johnson (Conservative) wanted more allotments, and said they would legislate for them.

The times they could be changing.  And as they say in Parliament, 'Hear, Hear!'

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