Meeting community demand for allotments
The Government is urged to dramatically expand the number of public allotments by building on brownfield sites and encouraging landowners to donate unused holdings to their local community. With 100,000 people currently on a waiting list for an allotment, the New Local Government Network (NLGN) is calling for the Government and local councils to make better use of the estimated 3,500 hectares of unused brownfield land – the equivalent size of 25 Hyde Parks – to create new community allotments. With residents in some London Boroughs having to wait up to 40 years for a plot, NLGN argues that the need for additional land is clearly vital.
The number of allotments in the UK has declined from 1.4million in the 1940s to 200,000 in the present day. Recently however there has been an increase in their popularity as more people seek to grow their own produce, especially during the economic downturn. The Queen recently dedicated some of the Buckingham Palace Garden into an allotment to grow produce for the palace kitchen and Sarah Brown has begun to grow vegetables in the Downing Street garden. In 2008 the influential DEFRA Select Committee called for more allotments to be built to help tackle global food shortages. Director of the NLGN, Chris Leslie said: “With 1% of landowners owning 70% of land in the UK we would like to see the Government encourage them to share a small portion of it with people in their local communities, particularly those who do not have access to their own garden.”
http://www.nlgn.org.uk/public/press-releases/can-you-dig-it-meeting-community-demand-for-allotments/© New Local Government Network
