I am a Professor in Cultural Geography, Reader in Leisure, Landscape and Culture at Anglia Polytechnic University.

  I am author of the National Survey of Allotments, December 1997.

  I researched and compiled the data for this Survey. There is, of course, in addition to the material included in that essential report, a larger database on management, facilities, plotholder involvement, at national, regional, and very local level. If appropriate for the Inquiry, - or perhaps thereafter as a result of the Inquiry - further work on what is at present a database can of course be done, however requires some additional resourcing (for example, on vacant plots, see below).

  I am author of The Allotment: its landscape and culture, published Faber and Faber 1988, revised editions 1994, 1997 (Five Leaves Press, Nottingham). I produced the BBC2 film The Plot, seen by nearly two million viewers in 1994 and in 1995, which produced a large mailbag. I can make this film, along with four others in which I have been involved, available to the Committee - these include numerous actual case studies and testimonies of experience and practice.

   I am author of numerous academic, professional and popular articles on allotments. I am happy to make these available to members of the Committee should such a request be made. I have researched allotments in the UK, USA, East and West Europe, and given conference papers in these places over 10 years, and so have an enormous, prodigious and surely unique resource on which to assist the workings of the Committee. I am also in very active contact with plotholders across the UK, many of whom I have assisted in improving their work. I work also very closely with the National Society, with whom of course the Survey was made.

  I was a member of the Working Parties on Food Growing in Cities (Report 1996) and on City Parks (Demos, Working Paper 1995. I have experience of working with the Countryside Commission, on Leisure, and on Public Participation in Decision Making (Countryside Commission/Anglia University 1996), with a number of local councils, and of course with the DOE on the Allotments Survey, amongst many other connections; I am Visiting Professor at the Swedish University of Karlstad, and have been awarded honorary Presidency of local allotment groups.

  Beyond this database, resources, experience, professional contacts there are particular things that I would like to present to the Committee.

   -    Allotments are the key example of sustainable practice in relation to environment, and to social/cultural concerns.


   -    Allotments should now be considered in relation to environmental quality, sustainability, and landscape in urban and rural areas.


   -    They are important in terms of community development and cohesion; social responsibility.


   -    They are important in terms of environment quality/urban/rural landscape, food production, and habitat diversity.


   -    The age/gender profile of plotholders (Allotments 2000, NSALG) is important, and hardly reflects popular image.

  Age: almost equal participation of the three age groups 35-50, 50-65, over 65.

  Gender: Thorpe report 1969, women 3 per cent of plotholders; Allotments 2000 (1994) 15 per cent, a significant increase.

   -    I underline remarks made in the book, and in the report of Survey, that there are key problems with using the evidence of plot vacancy. Vacancies bear little relationship to allotment demand. This evidence is qualitative, gathered over twelve years, and there is no quantitative evidence that suggests otherwise. Plots are vacant because of: poor sites (by ground quality, location), poor management (by local councils, and by allotment associations) - particularly including lack of promotion, lack of maintenance/site preparation; rumour of likely disposal of site by landlord (very significant, local exemplar evidence). "Allotment efficiency" is closely related to these concerns. Although relatively insignificant, there may be a case for re-examining the basis on which rents are charged for allotment plots, although this should not be done in a way that ignores their enormous wide role for the people at large, and the fact of achievement of very low cost environment maintenance by plotholders, especially when this is coupled with devolved management and the consequent increase in commitment and effort amongst the allotment associations.


   -    Allotments are part of the urban and rural environment valued like parks, and frequently more highly, by both the plotholders and the larger community, aware of their environment value. The case of Durham City demonstrated this, where both the Durham Civic Society and the 11,000 people who signed a petition to safeguard the site, supported the broader value of the site in the local community.


   -    In summary, allotments provide a higher environmental quality (in both visual and sustainable terms) accessible to more people and at a more productive level per input than conventional agriculture.


   -    One in 65 households in England has an allotment plot. This, plus their broader contribution to environment quality as noted, underlines their great continuing importance, if anything an importance that is growing enormously, in the Britain for the new millennium. There is, in addition, the importance for those who have no access to private garden space, of exercise that allotment work provides (UK Government Health of the Nation Report 1992).

January 1998