At the full Council meeting on the 4^th of December 2008 A petition signed by 715 local residents was presented to Cambridge City Council by Dave Fox, secretary of Trumpington Allotments Society. He was asking the council to ensure the provision of allotments in the city was sufficient. Cllr Julie Smith had declared an interest in the item as she had been given a large box of vegetables by the Trumpington Allotments Society. She said that she had both entered this into the “hospitality register” and had made a donation to charity to the value of the vegetables.

Mr Fox spoke to say:

• allotments allowed people to learn new skills
• the allotments hosted school visits
• that gardening was good exercise
• that people growing their own food near where they live was good for carbon reduction and would be in line with the council’s climate change strategy

Mr Fox reported that there were several hundred people wanting allotments in the city, and that demand was rising sharply. He gave the example of the Histon Road allotments where the waiting list had risen from sixteen people in April 2008 to sixty by September. He called for better statistics on demand, and usage to be collected and called for greater co-operation between the allotment sites in the city, which he said were controlled by nine different owners. Mr Fox suggested the “allotments forum” be re-instated and requested council officer time be committed to the subject. The requirement for the council to co-ordinate its work on allotments provision with South Cambridgeshire District Council was also discussed.

Councillor Herbert was the first councillor to respond, putting some questions and suggestions to Mr Fox :

• He asked if Mr Fox had identified any potential sites for new allotments.
• He suggested the use of sites in the city on which development had stalled.
• He suggested applying for lottery funding, not for long term maintenance but for initial capital, and noted that one of the Lottery’s current themes was “Local Food”.

Mr Fox said he had made the connection between the hiatus in development and the potential for using these sites as temporary allotments. Mr Fox said Arbury park was a development of nine hundred homes with no food growing provision.

Cllr Dryden asked how well the council was doing with respect to the provisions of the 1950 Allotments act . Mr Fox replied that he would like to see the increase in the number of allotments in line with the existing level of provision which is around 100 acres for 120 000 people.

Cllr Nimmo-Smith asked Mr Fox how long he felt any temporary allotment provision would need to be in place to ensure that allotment holders got a reasonable return on the time and effort they invested. Mr Fox and his two colleagues from the allotments association conferred and said their gut feeling was a minimum time of about three years.

Councillor Nimmo-Smith asked next about community allotments schemes where those with spare space in their gardens come to arrangements with those wishing to make it productive. Mr Fox responded saying he was in favour of such garden share schemes, and said the provision of allotments in Cambridge was quite diverse with four privately owned sites, two owned by colleges, but he cautioned these did not have the statutory protection of allotments.

Cllr Hipkin asked what percentage of allotments in the city were untended. Mr Fox said the proportion was decreasing, and that often there were sad stories behind overgrown plots such as illness; though in Cambridge he said it was surprisingly common for people to go away on sabbaticals, working away from the city for a period of time.

Cllr Rosenstiel spoke to say the demand for allotments in the City had waxed and waned over time and there was a need to be flexible.

Mr Fox spoke about the increasing use of “starter plots”, of twenty five square meters which enabled more people to get some sort of allotment, and potentially “graduate” to a full size plot. Realising he was coming to the end of his time he finished by making the point that he felt we had to become a lower energy economy and saw allotments as being a key part of that.

Cllr Blair said that at Orchard Park Primary School: “the first thing they did at the school was to set up mini-allotments which the children use to grow food which they eat”. As well as promoting her role in the school Cllr Blair took the opportunity to tell everyone she was a member of the new Orchard Park interim community council which she said would become a community council. Cllr Blair said she would put what had been said by Mr Fox to the Arbury Park “action group”, and in an odd turn of phrase told Mr Fox that she thought they would “have a job for him” in establishing temporary allotments on part of the site.

Cllr Julie Smith responded to the petition saying that it had been successful in increasing her awareness of allotments, saying her knowledge had increased significantly over the last week. She said the council’s plots had a 93.7% cultivation rate and that moves to reclaim unused plots were accelerating.

The council then moved straight on to deal with formal motion which had been put to it by Labour Councillors Walker and Dryden. Council Leader Ian-Nimmo-Smith had to chase the petitioners, who had left the chamber, to let them know the council were going to remain on the topic of allotments. The proposal as put to the meeting was:

The Council, as the allotment authority for Cambridge, acknowledges

1. the importance of allotments to the community and the environment
2. the importance of meeting unmet demand in the City
3. that we must fulfil our statutory duty to make available suitable and sufficient allotments to meet the needs of the residents of Cambridge.
4. The Council therefore calls on the Director of Environment and Planning and on the Director of Community Services to submit a report to the Executive that :
   • establishes how many allotments are required to provide for the needs of present residents
   • identifies land that can be made available to let as allotments to fill this need
   • considers whether the potential number of allotments required in the new development areas is adequate for new residents and makes proposals to address any shortfall
   • sets out a programme and budget recommendations to ensure that all allotments have basic facilities including water and onsite toilets by 31 March 2010.

In introducing this motion Cllr Walker said she supported the petitioner’s approach, and she noted the legislation requiring the council to provide allotments including the 1950 Allotments act and the Allotments and Cottage Gardens (Compensation for Crops) Act 1887.Discussing the council’s allotment provision Cllr Dryden noted he had recently been asked his opinion by the council on the development of two houses on land adjacent to allotments in Cherry Hinton. He said he had responded already suggesting the land ought be considered for use as allotments, and noted that not only was the land the homes were to be built on to be taken up, but land was also needed for provide access to the site.

Cllr Smart made the suggestion that the city’s flat roofs should become allotments, not for tall plants like tomatoes and beans she noted, just ground hugging ones.

Cllr Wright suggested adding something to what the council was proposing to adopt to improve perimeter security, however she received no support for such a broad statement from other councillors, who reasonably suggested that any improved security should be focused where it is needed.

Cllr Julie Smith stated that “section 106 money”, arising from charges made on those building in the city intended to be spent on local facilities was already being distributed by area committees on projects such as providing “loos” (her word) on allotments.

Cllr Smith went on to propose changes to what the Labour councillors had asked the council to pass. She wanted the required report to go to a different committee, and she wanted to remove the target date for providing toilets. Cllr Smith didn’t take responsibility for this herself, trying to blame officers saying: “officers had recommended we don’t set unachievable timetables. She went on to say honestly admit: “we don’t want people coming back saying we didn’t meet the target we set.” Cllr Wright argued for the date to be kept in, but lost a vote on the matter when twenty four liberal democrats all supported Cllr Smith in taking it out.

Without the target date, and the report being taken to the appropriate scrutiny committee, thirty eight councillors from all parties voted in favour of the proposal to looking at the possibilities for increasing allotment provision in and around the city, Councillor Hipkin was the only one I noted abstain, none voted against.

I think this showed the petitions system and the public access to council decision making working reasonably well, although campaigners will probably need to look at the report and consider attending the scrutiny committee at which it is discussed to ensure progress is maintained, and perhaps suggest again aspects of their proposals which have not been taken up.