‘Increased Allotment Costs Will Hit Many Deprived Areas of the City’

This article by Green Councillor Martin Fodor was originally published on Bristol 24/7 on March 4th 2024. 

Allotments are popular, productive spaces that are rarely controversial.

They provide a vital source of fresh food and recreation for many people across Bristol – a space for social contact, exercise, and connection with nature.

Plots are highly sought after for the productive space they provide.

Despite this, the city has just seen a fractious consultation with more than 3,500 responses to questions regarding a new raft of rule changes and fee increases.

At the same time, the process of reviewing rents, charges and rules has been left in limbo by the outgoing Labour administration.

So where has this left muddy world of Bristol allotments?

As chair of the Communities Scrutiny Commission, which scrutinises all matters affecting communities across the city, I was left perplexed when dozens of residents were reaching for their pitchforks at a consultation that appeared without any cross-party councillor scrutiny.

New rules, fees and charges were proposed, extra work for site reps, and extra fees and responsibilities for people who’d had their plots for many years.

Extra charges for larger community gardens and orchards were also worrying growing groups, who said the extra costs would have affected their ability to start or function.

It was only after much pressure to see and examine what was going on that I secured a discussion for our commission members about the plans.

As a cross-party, backbench commission, we should have been invited to undertake this scrutiny role to begin with.

By this point, many changes had been withdrawn following public outcry, so we only had allotment and water supply rents to discuss.

Papers I secured for this meeting revealed in public for the first time the proposed annual service budget. It includes a sum for investment we were told would last for 15 years.

But there’s no sight of any real 15-year capital programme and without further income, now the extra charges have been postponed, there is little extra money going into the service and this plan can’t go ahead.

The current notional budget revealed is well short of such spending – and higher than the actual spend for several years.

It also lacks money for a sum called ‘corporate income target’. This is really a cut to the service – a £55,000 budget cut ‘returned’ to the corporate centre that was written into most departments to shrink spending under austerity.

Following our scrutiny, the reaction against massive rent increases spilled over into the meeting to set the council’s budget, as set by the outgoing mayor.

Some years ago, a cost-of-living rise was approved by the Labour cabinet to cover 2018-2025. However, these were never implemented, so there has been no inflationary increase since 2018

Don’t mess with an angry allotmenteer brandishing a rake – photo: Rob Browne

The Labour mayor’s budget deal with Tories that ‘saved’ allotments from an annual inflation increase is an illusory deal, as these smaller rises have not actually been levied since at least 2018, even though cabinet agreed they should be made.

The lack of smaller, staged inflation rises has directly led to the decline of the service offered by the council for allotmenteers, as running costs have risen year by year.

In response to the disquiet created by the consultation and the mobilisation of the Bristol Allotmenteers Resist campaign, the proposed steep rent and water rises have become tricky too.

The cabinet increase therefore became a problem but is still expected to go ahead on Tuesday.

We expect cabinet to nod through the proposed increases in plot and water rents that have been debated in the consultation – though now it’s phased in two stages, half being levied in April 25 and the other half s in April 26.

To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a cabinet paper from this administration that has not been passed.

We need to acknowledge that the way plot rents are charged; the different plot sizes, the unequal scale increases for smaller and larger plots, the way increases will hit many deprived areas of the city, and the impact on big areas used by community growing projects, are all contested, as well as the benchmarks used to compare Bristol fees to other authorities.

Alternative ways to levy charges have been suggested, for example square metre charges rather than arbitrary bands.

But standstill prices aren’t an option. A service without a capital fund to invest is one in decline as everything from water pipes to fencing will require repairs and investment.

Allotments are an invaluable service provided by the council, but the reality is that even after the full proposed Labour Cabinet rises in 2025 and 2026 the capital programme and kickback of £55,000 is still illusionary.

The department gets subsidised by the wider parks budget which earns money from events and concessions.

‘Allotments are for everybody’ is the message of this billboard in St Werburgh’s – photo: Rob Browne

Following the recent outcry, there is now a very highly mobilised group of service users whose trust in the council has been eroded and who experience a very weak service.

One extra member of staff being promised won’t change that, even if some capital gets found.

The relationship with service users and stakeholders is now blighted – there are worried tenants, their helpers, community growing groups fearing new plot and water fees, and site reps (where they exist) who have been led to believe they shall have lots more rules to manage.

The various rule changes and extra fees have now been left behind by the mayor for the new committee system to rethink.

These relationships will need to be rebuilt to come up with collaborative, constructive solutions to create a better funded service, which will be tough but not out of reach if we bring in new ways of working in partnership with stakeholders.