17 FEBRUARY 1998

PROFESSOR DAVID CROUCH and MR GEOFF STOKES

  40.  You have referred now to changing procedures at a local level?

  (Professor Crouch)  Yes.

  41.  And this is in order to make issues clearer and to have more involvement and to have more information about what is happening. Would you like to see any difference in procedure between the national level and the local level, that is, between the department and the local authority?

  (Professor Crouch)  I am sure that Geoff Stokes will have something to say there, Mr Chairman, but I feel that there are issues concerning the criteria that need to be considered before making disposal by a local authority which can then be appealed against to a higher level should that not have been applied, and certain clarity of legislation which would encompass procedures, consultation and so on, would be where I would see central government as being particularly involved. It may be that adjacent to that we need to consider the possibility of a green belt type status for allotment areas, although at the moment perhaps this is not the most rosy time at which to suggest it.

  42.  Would you be concerned if the department suggested that they withdrew from the process?

  (Mr Stokes)  Yes, we would. We opposed this in 1979 and the Government at the time fully supported us in that. The basic argument was that councils should not act as their own judge and jury, which is what we felt would be happening. It took me a bit of research, Mr Chairman, but there were several comments that were actually made and reported in Hansard at the time, and this is 1980. John Heddle stated: "I fear that the provisions of the Bill if they remain unamended in Committee will reduce substantially the number of allotments available in the future". He continued later to say, "These vital safeguards should continue to be vested in central Government so that the Court of Appeal continues to be available to allotment holders as an appeal of last resort against any action by the local authority". Mr Waldegrave then said: "I should like to add a welcome from this side of the Committee" - and this is again is from February of 1980, Mr Chairman - "to the Minister's flexibility on allotments. Section 8 of the 1925 Act is a key one." Then Mr King, who I believe was the Secretary of State at the time, said: "I begin by reinforcing what my Hon Friend, the Member for Bristol, said with regard to the retention of section 8 of the 1925 Act as a key ingredient." He then continued to say: "I refer the Hon Gentleman back to the hope that we are maintaining, and I remind him of the important provision in section 8 which requires the Secretary of State's consent to be obtained for disposal of any allotment and requires him not to give consent unless he is satisfied", and so on, and then he continues: "That is the existing state of the law. By the agreement of the Committee it will remain so." Therefore, Mr Chairman, in 1980 - and this was in respect of the Local Government Act of 1980 - the Government of the day clearly saw the need for this section to be retained and that it must be retained. I would again, Mr Chairman, refer to this - and you will forgive me because I have been trying to sort this out.

At that time one of our main arguments was in respect of some information which we received in respect of the town clerk of Cheltenham Borough Council, that is, in 1980. It says, "The town clerk reported to his council the impact of the Bill and stated that if the Bill was passed in its present form" - that is, with the section 8 consent removed - "the council would have considerable freedom over allotment land. This means that the council could shortly expect to be in a position to dispose of the land without any legal responsibility to provide alternative land and sites for any allotment holders displaced." Mr Chairman, we do not believe that that situation has changed at all.

Chairman:  Thank you. Tom Brake?

  43.  Thank you, Mr Chairman. I would just like to press you a bit on local authorities. You really are giving local authorities a very bad press. I am still a councillor and therefore I feel a partly aggrieved party.

I am sure that there are local authorities that deserve a bad press, but presumably you do accept that there are circumstances, particularly in today's present financial circumstances, where local authorities are making decisions about, "Can this site be kept as an allotment site or can this site be used as a site for a primary school that is desperately needed in the area?" and this is the only land that the local authority can afford to use for that school?

  (Professor Crouch)  I would say alongside that, Mr Chairman, that we are also at a time when there is an enormous need for community development and community responsibility, help for young people, hope for the unemployed and the possibility of family involvement participation, an awareness of environment, the loss of quality environments in so many parts of built up areas that have very much been plugged up over the last 20 or so years by development as well, so that these are extremely important places. I fundamentally challenge the principles on which you are approaching that point.

  44.  A little earlier on you referred to the importance of securing a wider community involvement for allotments, Professor Crouch, and you talked about encouraging the wider feeling of ownership and interest. Can you perhaps say a little more about that?

  (Professor Crouch)  Yes, indeed. Immediately I would defer to my colleague and friend, Martin Stott, who is appearing before you next week who I think will have a sparkling example to tell in great detail and I would also refer the Committee to the evidence in detail from the Growing Food in Cities report which I was involved with, published in 1996. The idea starts with having a view about allotments which is saying that, yes, they are for plot holders "and ...", and also they are for food production "and ...", and in that sense one is opening up their value, which is actually implicit and many people do experience, but in much bigger ways. A lively allotment society can negotiate, liaise, work with, local councils, local firms, local sponsors of a variety of kinds and local voluntary groups, schools, social service departments, environmental food growing organisations, local civic trusts, as in the case of Durham, to develop events, to encourage people to visit the site for particular purposes, perhaps ecological work, and enabling youngsters to participate in repairing buildings, clearing areas and things like that, in ways that give people a sense of responsibility, a responsiveness to the environment, and in a sense allotment holding has been sustainable for much longer than the word sustainability has existed and in a sense it offers a great example of good ways of using the environment.

Therefore, in all of those there are possibilities.

  45.  Who would be controlling those activities? I notice earlier when Mr Stokes was questioned about self management and different ways of controlling allotments. There seems to be a little confusion about whether society or the people involved would accept the responsibility as well as the freedom, and I just wondered how that would relate to this concept of the wider community?

  (Professor Crouch)  There are numerous examples, I think; I do not think that there is one way of approaching it. In some places innovative local authorities, as in the case of Bradford which was mentioned earlier, have given their allotment related officer responsibility to be involved with a whole series of interrelated ecological activities, which includes the allotments, it includes getting recycling material which can then be used on the allotments and then having food available to certain parts of the community which would not otherwise be available.

In other places such as Handsworth, Birmingham, as an example of the local allotment association on the Uplands site, they have a scale of site that they can get resources among their members and they can pitch those with the local council resources, and they have their own allotment site officer who is in touch and spends all of his full time post to liaise with a variety of organisations and it seems to be going from strength to strength. This also means that the allotment holders generally - not all of them obviously, not everyone - are much more excited about what is going on. It rekindles their community activity. Over the last few years I have observed things that I have seen in the States actually happening here where the allotment has become a very important focal point. This then is a responsibility which is shared between the parties.

Whether it is something that can be regularised I am not sure, but it may be that local authorities might have added to their other responsibilities to do with sustainability a concern which includes allotments as part of the local environment and as part of the local community.

Chairman:  Professor Crouch, I think that I had better stop you there. I am getting a bit conscious of the time. Mrs Ellman?

  46.  Do you see any value at all in the designation temporary as opposed to statutory?

  (Mr Stokes)  No, Mr Chairman, that has always caused more confusion than anything else. We have had a lot of examples and, as I say, I would apologise if I appeared to be knocking all councils. I am not.

There are some very good councils. Unfortunately, in nine years as secretary of the society I have to deal with the bad ones. Far too many councils declare their sites as temporary because they do not have the faintest idea of why they were purchased in the first place. The local government reorganisation in 1974 caused considerable problems because when the urban district councils went a lot of the new town councils handed their allotments over to the district councils, and the district councils had no longer got the paperwork. Again in terms of allotments in my own town, the district council have always declared them to be temporary allotments even though they have applied for section 8 consent, and their reasons for saying that as far as they are concerned they were not purchased for allotment use are because the conveyance did not say that it was purchased for allotments. The fact that the conveyance was for the purchase of allotment seemed to make no difference to them. We also had a situation in Derbyshire where the land was purchased in 1895 for sewage outfall, it was transferred on local government reorganisation to the district council who, when the town council was then put back into existence, transferred the land back again, and we claim that clearly that land had been appropriated to allotment use because the district council was not responsible for sewage, and in handing the allotments back to the town council it can only have been for allotment purposes. Again, however, they insisted that it was only temporary land because the original purpose was sewage outfall. I have another situation in Devon, Mr Chairman, where we have some people down there who are trying to get hold of allotments and in correspondence in 1992 Totnes Town Council said: "The town council does not own any land suitable for use as allotments as such land was transferred to the ownership of the district council after the last local government reorganisation." When anybody contacts the district council they say, it is not our responsibility to provide, it is the responsibility of Totnes Town Council, so clearly the temporary status purely means that they do not have to get consent.

What the society would like to see - and clearly we would like all allotment land owned by the local authorities that has been used for allotment purposes certainly for a number of years actually to be designated as statutory - what we would like to see as an alternative, as long as we still have the requirement of section 8 consent, is that it seems feasible to include temporary allotments in with the secretary of state's consent on the basis that the land has in fact been appropriated to allotment use albeit on a temporary basis. At least in that way we would have the same protection if this land is disposed of that there must be alternative land made available for the displaced plot holders as for statutory allotment land, so that if we are retaining the status quo, then if we could bring the temporary allotments in with the consent requirement, to all intents and purposes it would have the same amount of protection as statutory allotment sites.

Chairman:  We do need to move on now, and may I ask you to keep your answers a little shorter because we are running rather short of time. Tom Brake?

  47.  Obviously there is a problem with statutory and temporary status. However, is not the problem much wider than that because even if the statutory was enforced and the temporary status land was brought into the statutory category, are not local authorities using other means such as compulsory purchase orders to get round the problem anyway to get access to allotment land?

  (Mr Stokes)  Yes, but strictly in my conversations with the Department they were going to make attempts to make sure that allotment land that was subject to section 8 consent should not be compulsorily purchased without it actually going through the section 8 procedures, and it has in fact happened in areas where land was compulsorily purchased but we did not have an opportunity to object under compulsory purchase powers, of course.

  48.  Would the same thing apply in terms of the Local Government and Housing Acts which I understand are also being used?

  (Mr Stokes)  Yes, it would.

  49.  And you think that that would be sufficient reform of allotment law to guarantee allotment land?

  (Mr Stokes)  It would be a start.

  50.  Do you see other measures that you have not mentioned already?

  (Mr Stokes)  Basically for open space playing fields there is what is known as the six acre standard.

That is an unofficial standard that is adopted by the National Playing Fields Association, and my understanding in speaking to local councillors is that they work to that six acre standard. It is not statutory.

Allotment land is statutory, yet councils are not actually using the same sort of standards that they would apply to open space playing field land, so clearly we do need some better protection and understanding of what is actually intended by allotment legislation.

  51.  When you mentioned playing fields, are you suggesting the standard that should be applied?

  (Mr Stokes)  At this precise moment, no, Mr Chairman, except that now that we have better statistics on allotments we can at least look at the average provision per 1,000 households as being a starting point for a standard. I have approached one or two of our local authority members with a view to seeing what their thoughts are on perhaps trying to achieve a standard that could perhaps be agreed by most local authorities.

  52.  But you cannot give us a figure to put the local authorities next week?

  (Mr Stokes)  At the present time, Mr Chairman, the average provision is 15 plots per 1,000 households, and that would seem to me to be a good starting point knowing that in areas like the north east the provision is up to 32 plots per 1,000 households.

  53.  From your own experience which you have described presumably you do not view the provision that is there for allotment holders to challenge decisions about the status or sale of land to be adequate?

  (Mr Stokes)  Unfortunately, Mr Chairman, they are not. With regard to section 8 consent the secretary of state only has to look as to whether there is alternative land available. He will not take into consideration any other matters that may in fact arise in future. Again we have examples where an alternative bypass route was proposed - no, I am sorry, not proposed, because there were several alternative routes, and the allotment site was actually disposed of, that is, the surplus plots were disposed of, for use as playing fields, yet the only route for this road would be through the middle of the allotments that were left. Now we put in a challenge on the basis that if the decision goes ahead to allow the plots to go and the road goes through in its proposed route, then the rest of the allotment land would be lost and the secretary of state said that he was not able to take that into consideration but could only deal with the matters that were before him at that particular point in time.

  54.  My question relates to planning provision, Mr Chairman. Do you believe that the value and importance of allotments is adequately reflected within present planning guidelines?

  (Mr Stokes)  No. As far as I am aware they are not included at all.

  55.  How would you go about having them incorporated?

  (Mr Stokes)  Again, if we can get agreement on what should be statutory provision, there have been several suggestions in the past. In 1950 the Allotments Advisory Committee recommended four acres per 1,000 households. The Thorpe committee of inquiry into allotments recommended a minimum of half an acre per 1,000 population plus additional subject to demand, so that there have been recommendations in the past. The difficulty is that I cannot say that I am actually clear in my mind that we should be specifying within the legislation a set provision because if we specified a set provision, then areas where there is higher than average provision may well then be in a position to say: oh, well, we are providing more than we have to, so there is nothing wrong with us disposing of the allotment land.

  56.  Do you believe that protection perhaps along the lines of the green belt system would be appropriate?

  (Mr Stokes)  Yes, we do, yes, it would be.

  57.  Then there is a third question, Mr Chairman, following on from Mr Brake and Mr Donohoe on the matter of charges for allotment holders. Have you any indication how much money nationally is directed into allotments by local authorities as compared to glamorous and prestigious leisure centres and squash courts and indoor bowling rinks?

  (Professor Crouch)  Mr Chairman, I believe that work was done by Tom Hume in the 1980s in London which demonstrated that allotments had (and, okay, he was an interested party) a substantially less investment for the number of people involved than other kinds of leisure facilities provided in an area.

  58.  Have you ever made representations to the local government associations to try to have this imbalance redressed? Have you ever included yourselves in any discussion with the various health authorities looking at the health aspect, improving the health of the district in which we live, speaking to the district authorities?

  (Mr Stokes)  This is an area that we are only just beginning to get involved with, Mr Chairman, and previously because of the origins of allotments, the subsistence growing of food, the society's efforts have been concentrated in trying to protect allotment sites for that purpose. It is only within the last four or five years that I and the society are obviously becoming more aware through a survey of members which showed wider reasons for them having allotments. The survey has opened the door to discussions with other groups and we have been doing this. We are now beginning to write to other organisations. This has been done on a local basis, but not on a national basis.

A number of regional groups have been in touch with their local health authorities, but we have never actually dealt with this on a national basis before.

Mr Cummings:  And, in conclusion, Mr Chairman, perhaps we could have a note from Professor Crouch in relation to the imbalance of funds.

  59.  Would you like to have an allotment on prescription?

  (Mr Stokes)  Well, Mr Chairman, I have certainly met a number of people whose health has improved since they have had an allotment, so, yes!

  60.  On that note I think that we ought now to finish. We have overrun our time. Thank you very much indeed.

  (Professor Crouch)  Thank you.

  (Mr Stokes)  Thank you.