What 'allot' of waste!

10:19am Tuesday 8th July 2008

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By Lucy Clark »

THEY are among the most sought after pieces of land in Hampshire.

As the credit crunch bites ever deeper, greater numbers of people are trying to cut their food bills by growing their own vegetables on an allotment.

Hundreds of residents are currently on waiting lists to get a prized plot to avoid food inflation running at more than seven per cent.

Today the Daily Echo can reveal that one council has left dozens of allotments to go to rack and ruin in the face of huge demand.

Plots vacated over the past six years at Woodside Allotments, in Woodside Avenue, Eastleigh, have been left abandoned - despite the fact there are now more than 250 people on the waiting list and the council has a legal duty to provide enough allotment space for its residents.

Woodside does not appear on Eastleigh Borough Council's list of sites and therefore, according to the remaining occupants of the site, might as well be invisible. There are now 35 full size plots unoccupied - over one third of the site - at Woodside, the largest remaining allotment site in Eastleigh. Some vacant plots have been carpeted over to stop them overgrowing with weeds. Others have turned into mini meadows.

Council chiefs say it is because the site is reserved for housing, although no planning consent, or even permission to dispose of the allotments, has yet to be granted.

Jeff Dunn, who has rented a Woodside allotment for seven years, said: "Woodside does not appear on the council's list, but we are definitely here!

"There are empty plots here that people could be growing things on. I'm extremely sad that's not happening.

"The council is tearing the heart out of the allotments service because this is a shining example of everything that is good in allotment gardening."

Fellow Woodside allotment gardener Tony Murrills, secretary of the 500-member East-leigh and Bishopstoke Allotments Co-operative Association, said: "Seventy people could have a half-size plot and be off the waiting list. But this is the invisible site - it does not exist as far as the public is concerned.

"Why have those plots not been released to the waiting list?"

The council must submit a planning application, which it can grant itself, but also get Government permission to dispose of any allotments.

A spokesman for Eastleigh Borough Council said there were currently 255 people on its allotments waiting list.

He said: "The council is not taking new tenants at Woodside because the site has been allocated for housing in the district plan that was adopted in May 2006. Woodside does not appear on the council's list of sites for the same reason. But the council has always envisaged the retention of some allotments at Woodside.

"We are managing the current waiting list. The current turnover is about five plots per week."