Just seen your post. Where we are, "t'Committee" seems to have upped their inspections to monthly. It's one of the biggest gripes and so we've formed a Working Group of growers (t'Committte aren't) to provide a more co-ordinated and informed response as to why we dont have soil like Monty Don and so don't get the same results. We think that now we have full capacity on the site, folk should be encouraged to enjoy the whole veggie growing experience and not be "called to account" by individuals who may not have the first idea as to why a holder has not been able to work their plot to some arbitrary and unrealistic standard.
Monthly is even worse than our threatening letter (which nobody has owned up to - so most people have ignored it).
Good for you - reassuring to hear that serious growers have chosen to take an active response to the kind of power-seeking deadheads that only push themselves onto a committee because they enjoy telling people what to do.
I'd like to point out some weak spots in any "tidy police" reading of the Allotment Acts - especially regarding the meaning of a "clean plot" and any other indicators that don't tie in with the obvious paramount aim that plots must be productive - for the sake of "food security" (a new name for a very,very old idea - older than agriculture itself)...
On this basis it's hard to imagine the original writers sharing any blind spots with the idiots who think that a plot with a few annual weeds and grasses is a problem despite the fact that the holder has worked hard to keep perennial weeds and grasses out (some of which are tolerated by the "tidies" despite them being actually illegal). This is clear evidence of the rank ignorance of the inspectors.
The old-fashioned title of "allotment gardens" no longer makes sense - at the time it was coined, nearly everyone who had a "garden" at home had already turned it over to growing spuds...
Talking of spuds - they make the March inspection very misleading - unless you grow spuds there will be nothing to see - maybe not even bare earth - and why bother? The main reason for digging the whole plot over the previous Autumn was to plant potatoes at Easter.
In these slug-pellet-free times, most people have their onion and leek seedlings at home and I certainly find it better to plant them when the soil is dry enough to dig in Spring. Most of my plot is no-dig anyway - I just plant my Mediterranean stuff (90% of what I grow) in May as big seedlings in a richly fertilised hole in an otherwise undisturbed bed - and it also pays to wait for flowering before planting out if you want an early crop.
Be very careful to make points about the actual size of your plot. Your 125 or 250m
2 plot will include half of the 60cm wide unproductive paths around it - a 10x25m plot loses 21m
2 of its 250m
2 - so these unproductive areas will be around 10% of the whole plot - a (not unusual) 5mx50m plot has already lost 33m
2.
I don't know where the 75% cultivation rule come from but it certainly can't apply to the gross area since the cultivated area would have to be 84% planted to meet it - you wouldn't be able to have more than a single 1.2m bed with 45cm paths both sides - the rest of the plot would be a quagmire of trodden mud unless you have enough planks - and careful the tidies don't see them or they'll call that unproductive soil.
It's nonsense of course - everyone who's studied 1.2m beds agrees that despite the paths they are more productive than open beds, and the raised version much more so - double that on heavy soil.
Anyone who grows on a slope also gets the massive benefit of terracing for the same amount of work - but it's all nominally illegal in our borough.
I haven't run out of examples of stupidity but that's enough for now.
Cheers