This thread was starting to talk generally about rules, and rather than hijack it I wanted to post a mini-essay I'd written previously and generate a bit of dabate.
Why have rules at all? Would anarchy reign? No, probably not. Actually I doubt very much if many allotmenteers have a working knowledge of their rules anyway. Mostly folk tend their plots as it pleases them and mostly we rub along together nicely.
With rules comes tyranny. For example, it’s not entirely unreasonable to have a rule that requires you keep your plot clean and well cultivated because weed seeds blow across to neighbouring plots and cause a nuisance. But how clean’s clean, and who decides? Heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment? 24 well-balanced undergraduate students took part in a prison simulation which was scheduled to last two weeks, some in the role of prisoners, some in the role as guards. After just six days the experiemnt was aborted with one-third of the guards judged to have exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies and many prisoners emotionally traumatized. What this means for allotment rules is that even the nicest most well-balanced individual can all too easily turn into a tin-pot dictator.
The rules create the evolutionary pressure, and nature obliges and fills the vacuum with interfering busybodies who make it their duty to hound the deviants like something from a John Wyndham novel. You might hope that some kind of oversight committee would catch this, but groupthink works against this. Social psychologist Clark McCauley defines three conditions under which groupthink occurs:
* Directive leadership.
* Homogeneity of members’ social background and ideology.
* Isolation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis.
This is pretty much the formulation of a parish council, particularly one that doesn’t engage its allotment tenants.
That said, there will always be tenants who want to use their allotment as a municipal dump or builder’s yard and unless there are rules it’s not possible to do anything about that. Here’re the minutes from a meeting of the Swanage Allotments Working Group where they resolved
The Clerk to serve notice to the tenant for the removal of 11 of his 14 sheds, each of the 7 trailers, 3 cement mixers and other items of debris stored upon the three plots occupied.
That seems fair enough wouldn’t you say? But would you need a rule that requires all structures to have written permission? Doesn’t that just lord it over the tenant? How about “no more than one shed and that no more than 10′ x 20′.
How about polytunnels. What’s the problem with them? It’s an allotment, it’s what allotments look like, all sheds, compost bins, bean frames and polytunnels. The allotment movement has a long tradition going back almost two hundred years. You grow what you want, how you want and make the most of what you can find. Compost bins are made from pallets, sheds from old doors. Some plots have paths mown with military precision and veg in rank and file, others let their veggies cavort like Maenads. It’s glorious, and very many people get a lot of pleasure from their allotment gardening.
So what rules can a council actually make? Councils need a Power under an Act of Parliament for everything they do, and this applies to allotment rules too. A statutory allotment site is provided under a Power created by the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 and rules are made under Section 28 which is basically
1. Subject to the provisions of this Act, a borough, urban district, or parish council may make such rules as appear to be necessary or proper for regulating the letting of allotments under this Act, and for preventing any undue preference in the letting thereof, and generally for carrying the provisions of this Part of this Act into effect.
2. Rules under this section may define the persons eligible to be tenants of allotments, the notices to be given for the letting thereof, the size of the allotments, the conditions under which they are to be cultivated, and the rent to be paid for them.
3. All such rules shall make provision for reasonable notice to be given to a tenant of any allotment of the determination of his tenancy.
I guess a court would have to agree that “the conditions under which they are to be cultivated” includes provision for rules to restrict polytunnels because polytunnels are a method of cultivation. What’s interesting is that there doesn’t appear to be anything in the Power to restrict sheds, nor ban dogs and children nor prevent you growing trees.
Some Council think that the Allotmets Act 1950 only allows chickens and rabbits to be kept on allotments. Actually what Section 12 does is create an absolute right of the tenant to keep rabbits and hens whether the allotment rules allow it or not.
1. Notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in any lease or tenancy or in any covenant, contract or undertaking relating to the use to be made of any land, it shall be lawful for the occupier of any land to keep, otherwise than by way of trade or business, hens or rabbits in any place on the land and to erect or place and maintain such buildings or structures on the land as reasonably necessary for that purpose
There is nothing in the Allotments Acts to restrict what animals can be kept on an allotment, and traditionally pigs and even horses have been kept on allotments, but councils aren’t obliged to allow anything but rabbits and chickens, and it would seem out of meanspiritedness they don’t.
And while were talking leagal eagle, it’s worth looking at the Human Rights Act. Article 1 of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights which is made law in the UK by the Human Rights Act 1998.
Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.
This means that a public authority cannot put restrictions on what someone does with their property or interfere with a person’s property unless there is a law that allows them to do this and there is a good reason for doing so. And property here has a broad definition which certainly includes an allotment.
