News of fresh disasters...
Following on from my previous postings, we have had our allotment taken away from us by our local authority.
We had a meeting at which we had a frank exchange of views but the upshot was that we were 'snookered' by the science.
The Environment Agency produces Soil Guidance Values (SGVs) - here's a quote from their website (
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/landquality/113813/672771/675257/?lang=_e :
"Soil Guideline Values have been derived using the Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment (CLEA) model according to three typical land uses:
* residential (with and without vegetable growing)
* allotments
* commercial / industrial
Where applied appropriately, exceeding a Soil Guideline Value indicates the need for either further investigation and/or remediation."
As you can see, allotments are in a category all of their own.
There are 2 important points which I think merit interest from all allotment holders:
1. Every local authority has a statutary duty (since 2002) to have a 'contaminated land policy'. This means that they should be aware of the quality of all the land they have responsibilty for and whether the land is 'safe' against the figures supplied by the Environment Agency. The fact that they haven't been round and tested your allotment yet is simply down to lack of resources (time, money and manpower) - but they will in the next year or two.
2. 'Remediation' - when applied to allotments means 'close'. Cleaning up of contaminated soil is a very expensive business (usually only worth it if your planning a housing development or some such thing). Allotments come very far down a council's list of things to spend money on - financially the only practical option is to immediately shut the site and offer plots on other sites (oh, and £50 compensation).
This post is by way of an early warning especially if your site is on land reclaimed from some industrial activity (ours was an old domestic tip but had also been used as a dump for industrial clinker).
----I'm still grieving for my potatoes---