I waited for four years for my allotment. Most people on the waiting list will wait longer today. In 2018, when I got my first plot as a student in Leeds, I was on the waiting list for less than two weeks.
Rising populations, particularly in terms of density in urban areas, coupled with a desire to live greener lives, as well as too many plots being allowed to go unused, now means that the average wait time in Britain for allotments is three years. In parts of London there is a 15-year wait.
In Merseyside, there are about 5600 plots, with a combined waiting list of more than 6600 people across different local authorities (not including privately managed sites). Given how tightly plot holders cling onto their sites, it’s increasingly rare for the waiting list to reduce more than a couple of people per year, per site.
I know I’m lucky to have a plot, but it shouldn’t feel like luck, it should be a right. And it sort of is, but one that isn’t generally acknowledged.
Section 23 of the Allotments Act 1908 details that, if there is sufficient demand for allotments, councils have a duty to provide them. Sufficient demand is a vague term, but they have to at least assess the demand if six or more households write to them asking for consideration.
And, given that waiting lists outstrip plots, it feels like there is clear demand in Merseyside for greater allotment provisions.
There is context to this, by the way.
If you missed it last month, a huge living artwork was planted at a Tesco-owned site in Litherland. The Waiting List, an allotment-sized living artwork, is an intervention by Greenpeace UK, and artists Dr JC Niala, Julia Utreras, and Sam Skinner from the Bad Taste Project.
In the centrefold of this newspaper, there is a feature (paired with the cover) by the artists, extending their intervention into the potential for action.
That feature provides a template letter, along with contact details for each local council, so that you, along with five other households can make that request without barriers if you are one of the 178,183 people on UK allotment waiting lists.
I’m really proud to have played even a small role on the peripheries of this, and take my hat off to Greenpeace UK and JC Niala, Julia Utreras and Sam Skinner in particular, both for the research that went into this, and the considerate approach to making art without permission. The results are and will continue to be beautiful.
Read more about the project, and find the letter template in the central pages of this paper, or download the template at www.artinliverpool.com.
