Cllr Stewart Golton

I have been contacted by many concerned allotment holders and residents after the For Sale signs went up at the Victoria and Reservoir Allotment Sites in Rothwell. Land Agents Strutt & Parker are working on behalf of the Lord Mowbray Estate to sell both allotment sites.

Both sites are currently leased by Leeds City Council for allotment use, and this is a continuation of the leases originally set up by Rothwell Urban District Council before the First World War.

The Reservoir site was offered to Leeds City Council to buy a couple of years back, and officers asked local councillors for our views. We wholeheartedly supported the purchase, so you can imagine our surprise to discover that this transaction had not happened, and the site was once again being advertised for sale. Furthermore, the Council were thinking twice about buying the land, as ‘Rothwell had too many allotments’. I can confirm that after discussions I recently had with senior officers, they are now committed to buying the land.

If only this were so for the Victoria Site. The Council have told me that they could not afford the price that is being asked for the site, and that the site was Statutory Allotment land, so the plotholders were protected. As many of you know, I am a keen allotment grower, and I’m active in the Leeds & District Gardeners Federation. I used this hat to contact the National Society of Allotment Gardeners to seek their advice as to how we could best inform the Victoria Allotment plotholders of their rights if ownership of the site changed. It was at this point that it became clear that the site was not protected as Statutory allotment land, and the Council admitted this after looking more closely at the lease.

If any new owner chose to end the lease of the land for allotment use to Leeds City Council, then there would be nothing stopping the new owner in giving the plotholders just 12 months notice to quit the site. The only protection that is offered is that which is included in the Unitary Development Plan that guides planning decisions within Leeds:
Policy 1A of the UDP states:DEVELOPMENT OF LAND CURRENTLY USED AS ALLOTMENT GARDENS WILL NOT BE PERMITTED FOR PURPOSES OTHER THAN OUTDOOR RECREATION, UNLESS THE NEED IN THE LOCALITY FOR GREENSPACE IS ALREADY MET AND A SUITABLE ALTERNATIVE SITE FOR ALLOTMENT GARDENS CAN BE IDENTIFIED.

The above guidance is fine if only we had to rely on the local Plans Panel to interpret it, but all too often, a landowner can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, and often local decisions are overturned. That is why I have written to the Director of the Council department responsible for allotment provision to buy the land at Victoria. It is the only option to guarantee that the site is retained for allotment use, and that the 53 allotment growers can continue to tend their plots in which they have invested so much time and energy. The money raised from allotment rents in the city is around £120,000, and the Council spends less than that on its allotment service. The previous administration introduced a year on year capital budget of £75,000 to spend on the improvement of allotments. This was in recognition of the unpaid work that Allotment Associations put in to the upkeep of these valuable green lungs. The Labour-run Council has slashed that by two thirds. If the previous budget had been maintained, the purchase of Victoria allotments would have happened by now. Even in an environment of reduced public spending, basic fairness says that the Council should sit back and let an allotment site be lost, when that Council already makes a profit out of its allotment holders.