Topic: Allotment Rent gone up again!

[Gadget]

Just paid my annual allotment fee, which I freely admit is at the bargain price of £16.50,  however,  I was a bit shocked to receive a letter saying it is going up to £21.00 next year - that is an increase of 27.27% :o

Has anyone else had big increases?

[ACE]

I saw on the news the other night,that one allotment society/plot holder has challenged the rise as it is only supposed to go up by the rate of inflation.

[Gadget]

Thanks for that Ace, may raise it with them.  ;)

[dtw]

Mine has gone up from £13 to £56 as they have stopped the reduced rate for people on their leisure card scheme.  :-X

[Digeroo]

That's rather stiff.

[Unwashed]

I saw on the news the other night,that one allotment society/plot holder has challenged the rise as it is only supposed to go up by the rate of inflation.

It's Eastfield and District Allotment Association, they were on the BBC news.  Rents have gone up from £25 o £40.

They're relying on the judgment in Harwood v. Banstead and Reigate BC.  Essentially the court said that allotments are a leisure service like any other and are entitled to the same level of council subsidy as any of the other council's leisure services.  There's no reason why a council shouldn't increase its allotment rents substantially, but at the new rent the allotment service mustn't receive proportionately less subsidy than any other council leisure service.

[brown thumb]

i took over mine in jan 10 and the rent was £20 for a 25x75 plot and is the same this january

[boydzfish]

Ours went up too - £30 for a half plot £40 for a full one. I wrote to the parish council and pointed out how little we got for our contribution (We have no running water for instance) and that it was a bit steep to pay so much for a half plot and that £20 would be fairer. Result, they have dropped the rent for my half plot (And every other one)!! ;D ;D

[kt.]

As a self run site our rent is £24 with no rent rise last year and none planned for this year.  I am our allotment supervisor and watch our budget closely.  As long as I keep within budget there is no justification for any rent rises ;)

[Unwashed]

Newbury Town Council currently charge £6.94 per pole, and have just increased the rent to £7.30 because "such rounded charges are easier to administer". ???

[daveyboi]

Do not know if anyone has seen this research by Leicester University about allotments rents and waiting lists

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2011/november/researchers-dig-out-huge-variations-in-allotment-charges

One site had an increase of 207% between 2008 and 11

The most expensive is Runnymede District Council at 55p per sq metre.

[Digeroo]

This is interesting.  

However I am not convinced by all the data.  Wyre are cited has having the longest waiting list but seem to have more than 26 plots two site on their web site are not listed, does the waiting list cover more sites than the 26 plots, especially as the Wyre web site says the waiting list is 6 years.

I always find research like this disappointing when only minimal scrutinisation of the figures pulls up flaws.  I find it worrying that the cost of student fees has been raised to cover the cost of this kind of research.

I presume that self managed sites are excluded.

How does this compare with the data that Unwashed produced re average prices?  His straw poll covered a wider variety of plots types.

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that this research does not help allotments but fuels the drive to charge more.

[Gadget]

"Perhaps the most worrying thing is that this research does not help allotments but fuels the drive to charge more."

that leaves a nasty taste  :(

[antipodes]

As we are a private association, charges meet the expenditure. We pay rent and charges to the council.
When I first joined in 2007, it was 69 euros a year - this year it has hit 77. It is quite a lot I feel, we will have the breakdown of charges at the AGM next week. Each plot is 100 sq metres. We do have water and a communal shed and a bit of equipment.

[TAB]

Our rent is £20 but had been told that it was going up to £40plus but we have no running water or anything. And we have not ben told about the incerse our self its what had been said to other plotholders. And I was told that if there was a rent increase then you had to have 12months notice.

[Unwashed]

Do not know if anyone has seen this research by Leicester University about allotments rents and waiting lists

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2011/november/researchers-dig-out-huge-variations-in-allotment-charges

One site had an increase of 207% between 2008 and 11

The most expensive is Runnymede District Council at 55p per sq metre.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that.

The raw data aren't particularly interesting on their own and there is precious little analysis, and I'm not convinced the study was very well designed because it's hard to see what interesting analysis they can do with the data they collected.  What most of us would like to know is whether our site is on the cheap side, or expensive side, and without even the most basic statistical analysis we can't tell, and that's really rather poor.

It tells us what the average rent is, but we knew this pretty well anyways, and we already know that there is no standard basis on which a council decides its rent so telling us that there is a great range adds nothing at all.

Without parish councils and private sites in the survey it doesn't represent the whole of the allotment picture, and without asking about the management arrangements the survey is severely underminded as I'd expect that to have a big influence on rent.

What I'd have most liked to see from an accademic study was the careful definition of key performance indicators, and while price is interesting it is far from everything.  Service level is important, so things like number of water troughs and whether the site has a toilet, and some kind of measure of the community on site would also be interesting.

[Unwashed]

Do not know if anyone has seen this research by Leicester University about allotments rents and waiting lists

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2011/november/researchers-dig-out-huge-variations-in-allotment-charges

quoting the opening para:

Researchers from the University of Leicester have used the Freedom of Information Act to carry out a comprehensive national survey of allotment provision

Actually they sampled 326 of something like the 500-odd primary councils in England and Wales, getting rent information from 182.  Not one of the 8500 or so parish council were surveyed, and none of the hundreds of private allotment sites were surveyed.  Like Digeroo, I dispair when even the introduction is flawed.

The statistics, which have been published online, demonstrate the huge differences in allotment rents between different local authorities which range from one penny per square metre to 55p/sqm. An average allotment plot is about 250 square metres and costs 15p/sqm.

There was no analysis of plot sizes and so the survey knows nothing about how big the average plot is, and I'd be surprised if it was as big as 10 poles.  And having stuck the data into a spreadsheet I make the average 2011 rent 17.6p/m² (£4.40/pole) not 15p/m² (£3.75/pole).

[lincsyokel2]

There was no analysis of plot sizes and so the survey knows nothing about how big the average plot is, and I'd be surprised if it was as big as 10 poles.

The size of an allotment goes back to feudal times.

In Lincolnshire, at least, its related to the size of an Oxgang. This was the amount of land a single ox could plough in a season, and was about 15 acres, or  roughly 73,000 sq yards.  The exact measurements used vary from county to county and sometimes village to village, but one acre divided into ten plots was approx 515 square yards, and divided by a pole, works out at 17 poles. Further more,  its related to a horse and plough. A pole is the length from the horses nose to the ploughmans heel, 5.5 yards. A square pole is 30.5 square yards. 17 pole is 518 square yards, which as we ahve seen is 1/10 acre approx. Also, a allotment was based on the turning circle of a horse and plough (7 yards) times 70 yards long (the traditional length of a field). This also works out at approx 490 square yards.

So an allotment traditionally should be 17 poles.

Mine is.

[Unwashed]

This is the frequency distribution for the sampled councils.


The big central spike is the most common with rents in the range 12.5p/m² (£3.13 per pole) to 15p/m² (£3.75 per pole).  This is a better measure of a typical rent than a sample average because the distribution isn't quite symetrical due to a few extreme values on the right.

The inter-quartile range (mean +/- .67 sd) is 11.8p to 23.4p per m², that's £2.95 to £5.86 per pole, so if you're paying less than that you can consider yourself fortunate, and if you're paying more you're being gipped.

[Digeroo]

How was their average produced is it a weighted average included the numbers of plots involved.  The sheer numbers of Birmingham allotments would weight the results towards their charge.

From your point of view it does blow some of Newbury arguments recomparative pirces out of the water.

From my point of view to find that my cost is only slightly higher than the inter quartile range is quite reassuring.

And whats more your straw pole cost a lot less.