Showing posts with label self-management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-management. Show all posts

Thursday 3 March 2016

Defending the Council's role in allotment management

I could only attend the first half of last night's consultation  meeting on self-management of allotments. My impression by the time I left was that the majority of the large audience of allotment holders was sceptical about such a scheme - although that might have been changed by later presentations.

Council officers made it clear from the beginning that the consultation did not constitute a recommendation for allotments to be self-managed, 'nor is there a requirement to do so.'

Despite persuasive speeches from  Richard King of Barnet Allotment Federation and Richard Wiltshire of the National Allotment Society (there were other speakers later) the Q&A sessions revealed problems, not least (although it was said to be only a few hours a week), the amount of work involved in self-management (budgeting, managing lettings, rent collection, bank account, public liability insurance, dispute management) seemed daunting. 'We just want to get on with gardening' someone muttered.

The self-managed Allotment Association would take over maintenance of trees, paths, fencing and water and the question immediately arose of the inequality between allotment sites where some would face flooding problems or contain a large number of mature trees that would require maintenance.

Such inequalities would require such allotments to put up rents in order to have a fund to cover major expenditure while others would require less of a contingency and so would have lower rents. A response that there would need to be a 'levelling off' between sites  before they were handed over to Associations was not very convincing.

The audience were not much impressed by the guest speakers revelation that self-management had increased rents and that this was justified by the new freedom they had to improve the allotment.

Speakers from the audience suggested there was a need for an overall body to manage cross-borough waiting list rather than each independent self-managed site to have its own waiting list.

The argument, particularly from Barnet, that self-management was preferable to poor council management ('Easy Council' Barnet wants to get rid of everything anyway) was not in general favourable received, with  praise for the work of the current Allotments Officer, in allotment management, training, promoting organic gardening and sustainability and the overall Council food growing strategy,  despite more general criticisms of the Council.

Brent has 22 allotment sites, only one of which is currently self-managed, with the 21 managed by the Food Growing and Allotments Officer. At the end of January 2016 there were 1,064 plots of which 1,029 were let and a waiting list of 201 individuals.

Officers did refer to the Council's need to make savings and the possibility of budget cuts in the service but also stated that there were no plans to sell off sites to developers.

The legal position is that Section 23 of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 puts the Council under a duty to provide a sufficient number of allotments with powers to improve, maintain and manage allotments. However, he legislation does not set minimum standards and these powers are discretionary - not a duty: 'Each individual authority can decide how to use these powers and what proportion of its resources to allocate to the service.'

The proponents of self-management quoted this as a reason to opt for self-management as it would be easier to defend allotment provision if it was self-financing.

The almost forgotten 'Big Society' was quoted.


Sunday 21 February 2016

Self-managed allotments- local control or a cover for cuts?


Brent Council is holding a consultation meeting with allotment holders on 'Allotment Associations and Self-Management: The Future of Your Allotments?'  on March 2nd.

As part of the Food Growing and Allotment Strategy LINK tenants will be consulted on their views of self-management:
Councils across the UK are looking at different styles of management with the aim of running allotments more effectively. Having an Allotment Association os the first step to taking more ownership of your site and in its most extreme (sic) form, this means that Allotment Associations lease the sites from the Council and take on the full financial, administration and maintenance management of their sites.
In Brent one allotment site is already self-managed but other sites lack an Allotment Association.

Speakers include:
Richard King, Barnet Allotment Federartion on 'The Barnet experience'
Clare Fuchs, self-management in Hammersmith and Fulham
Richard Wiltshire, the National Allotment Society
Derek Osborne, Chair of the self-managed Old Kenton Lane Allotment Association
In my chats to fellow allotment holders there seems little appetite for self-management but I expect attitudes will vary across the borough.

'Full financial , adminstration and maintenance management' sounds like a considerable amount of work that will be transferred from council officers to volunteers.  Major maintenance such as control of trees, fencing and drainage will clearly be potentially very expensive although water bills, toilet lighting etc will be paid through regular rental income.

There are whole borough issues such as management of waiting lists where people may be interested in plots at more than one site and initiatives such as wildlife friendly gardening, sustainable and chemical free gardening, where the present Food Growing and Allotment Offfcer has performed a vital role, which would be lost if the post is abolished as a result of self-management.

I hope the meeting is well attended and the issues given a good airing.