17 FEBRUARY 1998

MS ANNE WAREHAM, MS KATHRYN MANSELL, and MR PETER MCGREEVY

  80.  Has there not been a dialogue? I mean, you may not like the result, but have the council really kept you informed as to what was going on and talked to you?

  (Ms Wareham)  When we started at the very beginning - and I know that most of the plot holders wrote to our local councillors - I wrote to my two local councillors and then five minutes away the ward changes, so I wrote to the councillors where the allotments are as well. There were three labour councillors and one conservative. The conservative councillor rang me up straightaway and I still have not heard from the other three local councillors.

  (Ms Mansell)  We have been to every single council meeting. We must have been to at least a dozen or so, maybe 20 meetings, in the past nine months. This has just taken over our lives completely and absolutely. The amount of stress that we are all suffering, it is absolutely unbelievable.

  (Ms Wareham)  We felt that the local council was happy to have us intimidated - it sound awful, doesn't it? - at the meetings that we went to. For example, we were invited to an informal meeting but when we got to the door husbands and wives were told that they could not come in to this informal meeting, so they went home.

At the informal meeting, we got there and we found that there was a whole row of high ranking council officials on a podium, and we were down here looking up at them, and that immediately is intimidating: it is not an informal discussion.

  (Ms Mansell)  They did not want to discuss our views; they wanted to tell us what they were going to do and they actually brought the borough solicitor with them who said that if some arrangement could not be reached over these new alternative sites, then they could actually evict us within three months from our site, so this is what we are dealing with. It was most unpleasant and we were all severely intimidated by this.

  81.  Are you saying that there has not been discussion at any time on any of these issues?

  (Ms Mansell)  That was the only meeting that all the plot holders have been invited to in the last nine months.

  (Ms Wareham)  There have been small meetings.

Chairman:  I think we do need to move on from that point now. Dr Alan Whitehead?

  82.  I understand that there was some initial confusion about whether your site was a statutory site or a temporary site and that the council changed its view during the course of the proceedings. Can you give the Committee your views on how those words are used by authorities and your views on how they might be used?

  (Ms Mansell)  There is still confusion over whether it is temporary or statutory. We are insisting that it is statutory because we have been there for over 40 years and the way that we interpret the law, purely as lay people, you have to have been in existence for over 20 years. We have been there for more than double that.

The council argue that it is not, this word appropriated again, for the use of allotments and it was yesterday - and actually we spoke and we had a slight confrontation with council officials - it was yesterday he told us to our face that we were not statutory, yet we thought that this was an issue that had been cleared up a long time ago. We argued that we are statutory because of the council's actions. We have been told that they have applied for consent to the secretary of state to change the use of the land and we are told that they would not have to have done this if it was not statutory, yet yesterday this man is still insisting, and he was a director of the technical services, so it was as if he was . . .

  83.  So your claim that the land is statutory is based essentially on how long you have been on the land? Is that right? That is your understanding of what statutory means?

  (Ms Wareham)  And that it has been continually cultivated since then.

  (Mr McGreevy)  Mr Chairman, if I may just add to that, basically these allotments were started off just a bit further north from Blackpool and they wanted the land to build a community centre. This is recorded in the council minutes. The council wanted to know where they could re-locate them and the park superintendent said that there was some land available on Leys Farm. Now this was early to mid sixties, and that is how it came into existence, and it started off with 12 allotments. Of course, as time goes by, people wanted allotments so it went up to 35. Now, for some unknown reason, it has dropped down to 30. That is still on the town plan as allotments, that extra five plots, and planning application for permission is now in to build houses on that bit of land that is still supposed to be in the council's view allotments.

  (Ms Mansell)  We have questioned the planning application that has gone in. If the secretary of state has not given his consent yet, we really question why this planning application has gone in when consent has not yet been given.

  84.  What I am trying to get clear on, and I think that you have helped me a little bit there, is this. We have received written evidence, for example, that the designation of statutory and temporary does not appear simply to relate to time; it relates to various other factors under the Allotments Act and that, however the public in general may well take the view the length of occupancy in fact conveys a transfer from temporary to statutory, in fact the evidence says to us that temporary status can be, as it were, renewed over a very long period of time. What obviously we are interested in is how that works in practice in terms of the interests of allotment holders. What you appear to be saying is that - and perhaps you would like to think in general terms for allotment holders - your view is that once you have been there for a certain period of time, then as it were your rights on the land as a society should alter and perhaps become statutory, which would obviously suggest a chance in how the law actually operates. Is that your view?

  (Mr McGreevy)  I do not think it applies in terms of how long we have been on the allotments; it is more how long the allotments have been there.

  85.  Yes, I am sorry, that is what I mean, how long the use of the site for allotments has been in existence, I think that is the question.

  (Mr McGreevy)  As far as I am concerned, Mr Chairman, and I think most other people too - and this is purely as a layman - because they were moved from one place and they had to find new allotments, we hoped it actually goes back to when the first ones were in existence because they were moved, I do not know, I suppose voluntarily - but it might have been Hobson's choice.

  86.  Are you saying that this site to the north was statutory so far as you know and this replacement land then is being provided under different conditions or status?

  (Mr McGreevy)  As I say, I am speaking purely as a layman, and things I have seen and read and spoken about with people. If you were actually moved through no fault of your own to another site, it automatically reverts back to when the first allotments were incorporated. Now, when that was, I do not really know.

  87.  In terms of what you have all said, and you have said as being lay persons, what advice have you taken? Have you been in touch with the National Association?

  (Ms Mansell)  Yes, we have.

  (Ms Wareham)  We joined as soon as this started.

  (Ms Mansell)  It is every man for himself.

  (Ms Wareham)  And they assured us that we had statutory status, that is, the National Association of Allotments assured us of that.

  88.  So what assistance has been given other than that by the National Association?

  (Ms Wareham)  They have been to some of the early meetings with the council and they have been there to advise on the law.

  89.  What legal advice have you sought, if any?

  (Ms Mansell)  It is mainly our own ingenuity, nothing more really. We have had practically no help.

It has mainly been our own stamina, loss of all normal family life over that nine months, because it has completely taken over basically - you are really looking at it now, with another three or four left at home!

  90.  Just to continue on this point, if I may, Mr Chairman, on the question of the application to the secretary of state by the local authority, what have you done to make representations to the secretary of state?

  (Ms Wareham)  We have sent in our application.

  (Mr McGreevy)  We have written.

  (Ms Mansell)  We have sent our objections to the secretary of state. They were both objections to the disposal of our present site and objections to moving to the proposed alternative site.

  (Ms Wareham)  We have been in touch with our Member of Parliament and we have been in touch with the papers.

  (Ms Mansell)  We have seen our Member of Parliament three times.

  91.  I just wanted to know for the record whether your experience has perhaps caused you to come to a view about the relationship between statutory and temporary sites. How would you want to advise us in terms of how future policy might go? Do you think that there is a substantial case, for example, for passing new laws which designate allotment land in some way and make it clearer?

  (Mr McGreevy)  I would like to say yes, because with the Allotments Act as it is, I would think to the ordinary people it is pretty useless, it is so complex.

Here we are, nearly in the year 2000 and they still have stuff there that only a lawyer can understand. We do not know whether is done for a reason.

  (Ms Mansell)  The way that we understand it is that it seems to be immaterial whether you have this statutory or temporary status anyway if the secretary of state has turned over 25 sites already, he has given his consent. It actually does not seem to be worth the paper that it is printed on anyway at the moment, the statutory status. At the moment it is obviously vital that we save our site. That is the vital thing.

  92.  But are you arguing therefore that allotment sites should effectively have preservation orders placed upon them?

  (Ms Mansell)  Well, exactly, yes, the ring fence idea sounds like quite a good idea.

Chairman:  Tom Brake.

  93.  Obviously you are very unhappy with having been told by the local authority what is going to happen in this case. Do you see any way in which the process of selling allotments land could be improved, giving you greater opportunity to lobby or to input or change the council's decisions?

  (Ms Wareham)  I think that the main problem is the lack of security, and there is actually no way that the allotments are secure.

  (Ms Mansell)  We just feel completely helpless, absolutely and completely helpless. The law as we understand it does not seem to support us at all. We feel really let down.

Chairman:  Can we have just one of you answering at a time, thank you. Tom Brake?

  94.  If I may just go back to the question, I was considering the sale of allotments land. If a local authority decides that it might need to sell the allotments and, for whatever reason, do you feel that there is a way that you could be more greatly involved in that process?

  (Ms Wareham)  But if the law does not back you up, it is so difficult, is it not?

  (Ms Mansell)  They do not want to know, they just do not want to know. We have handed them petitions, we have handed them objections, thousands of people have objected, and they just do not want to know. It is like talking to that wall. They absolutely do not want to know.

  (Ms Wareham)  They can put a conservation order on a bit of barren promenade, but they cannot put a preservation order of any sort on to the only little bit of beautiful wild land in the middle of north Blackpool.

Chairman:  Christine Butler?

  95.  Following on from that, Mr Chairman, would you say that the council are not meeting the demand for allotments generally?

  (Ms Wareham)  No, they are not.

  (Ms Mansell)  No.

  96.  Just give me further evidence of that. Are you aware how many people might be waiting and wanting allotments?

  (Ms Wareham)  We were told that in the seven sites in Blackpool they are all full and there an 18 months to two years waiting list, however many people that may be.

  (Ms Mansell)  Yet there are vacant plots on every single site. On our site now there are approximately half of the site - we are only 29 plots - and there are at least ten vacant, yet we know that many, many people have written in asking for an allotment and they have been refused an allotment, yet we have just had our tenancies renewed for a further 12 months, so they are deliberately not renting them off. That is the battle that we have got at the moment.

  97.  Have you met people, do you know people who were tenants and who now have lost their plots in this way so that there are now vacant plots?

  (Mr McGreevy)  Not on our site, no.

  98.  Do you know of people that this has happened to?

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  (Mr McGreevy)  Actually I do not personally - I do not know if the two ladies do - but, you see, we are in a unique position. Blackpool is a long stretched out town, seven miles long, two miles in depth. We use the town hall in Blackpool as the geographical centre, go up the side of the town hall to the north station and use that as a line, and these are the only allotments in the northern part of the town, a town of 150,000 population. They tried to move us up there, and it is only a small part of the site, it is only two acres of the 21 acre site, and they offered us this bog. To quote the council's words, we have trawled through our land resource and this is the only available site, so, if everybody asked for an allotment in the north part of the town, where does it go? They are duty bound to provide allotments.

  99.  You just said previously in your statement to the Committee that you lost a further five plots?

  (Mr McGreevy)  The five plots disappeared as allotments. On the actual plan of the town - it is a little booklet - it still shows those down as allotments. Now on this proposed building plan that they put on lampposts and things like that for objections, these five allotments - it may be six, five or six - are actually going to be under houses but they are still on their plan as allotments. All this has been proposed, this building scheme, before the secretary of state has made the decision, so are they just cock-a-hoop and saying, well, blow the secretary of state? I personally believe that they want us off sooner than the 12 months.