Getting hold of local council data and assessing information already out there
UK residents are entitled to request land to grow food. To get a comprehensive picture of what is going on with allotments in the UK we used the Freedom of Information Act. Specifically we used a website called that allows you to make up to 10 request a day. To find out what information councils themselves give about their allotments, we also assessed information freely available from council websites. More about this website analysis can be found here. Very few councils release allotment data as open data, but there are examples, see the Greater Manchester Data Store for limited data from Trafford and Salford Council.
Council allotments exist with a legal framework that makes them responsible for providing land to citizens to grow their own food. The 1908 Smallholdings and Allotment Act, Sec.23 (2) states:
On a representation in writing to the council of any borough, urban district, or parish, by any six registered parliamentary electors or persons who are liable to pay an amount in respect of council tax resident in the borough, urban district, or parish, that the circumstances of the borough, urban district, or parish are such that it is the duty of the council to take proceedings under this Part of this Act therein, the council shall take such representation into consideration.
As the law states, if six citizens come together to make this request, the council needs to take this into consideration. Unfortunately there is no time limit within which the council can respond.
It is our assumption that most people are not aware that it only takes six citizens citing this section of the Act to make a request for further allotment provision. The Council at present does not have to act within a specific period of time to provide more land, but that does not mean that it is worth exploring how to make it easier for citizens to make use of this existing legal framework. Read the Act in full here.
How can I find out about allotments near me?
Most city councils provide information on their allotments. But often, the information is hard to find, incomplete/non-existent or not very useful to citizens interested in growing their own food. In March 2013, we reviewed the allotment information provided by 255 councils on their websites across England (214), Wales (18) and Scotland (23). As it turned out, not all of these had responsibility for allotments and not all had websites. This review was independent and not commissioned by the councils themselves. More here.
Two examples of good practice by councils that ranked highly in our analysis are:
- Cheltenham scored highest overall in our website analysis, with 9 points in total. Website here.
- Cambridge scored 7 points overall, but we specifically note their waiting list ‘ticketing system’. Website here.
The Waiting List Crisis
Since 2009, Transition Town West Kirby (led by Margaret Campbell) has using the Freedom of Information Act to find out what is happening with allotment waiting lists across the UK. They provide an annual report (including all their data) here.
In 2011 we published some of this early work on The Guardian Data Blog. The end result was an interactive map showing where the longest waiting lists are in the country, incorporating the work from Transition Town West Kirby, as well as highlighting the highest rents.
Explore the map here and download the 2011 data here.
2013 Allotment data
We made requests to all councils that have a responsibility for allotments. You can view our requests . From the responses received we created a comprehensive database in an excel spreadsheet, which will be made publicly available open data on allotmentdata.org. At the moment this site is still password protected, as we are finish cleaning the data for release. These are the questions we asked in our 2013 request:
- How many council allotment sites are there within your Council? How many council allotment plots are there in total in your Council?
- Can you please send us the cost of an allotment within your Council for the years: 2012 and 2013 and what they will be for 2014. Please state clearly if this is for a full or a half plot and what size these are.
- Can you please send us the cost of using water as charged to individual plot holders within your Council for the years: 2012 and 2013 and what they will be for 2014.
- Can you please send us the rate of the discount available for renting an allotment plot within your Council for the years: 2012 and 2013 and what they will be for 2014.
- What has the cost of waste removal been to the Council in relation to allotment sites for 2012 and what are they likely to be for 2013 and 2014?
If you decide to use the Freedom of Information Act in this way, you will not get the information back in an easy to handle format. Most of the time you need to additional work to it, to make sense of it, or in our case, make is possible to compare councils. So not all rents will come in a standardised format, but in order to compare rents its useful to compare the cost as pence per square meter for example. Not all councils will be helpful or quick in their responses, see for example this response from Norwich City Council to our request from April 2013. It took them until November to get back to us. See their responses .
So as part of this project we updated the information collected about allotment plots and like 2011, we are linking it to a dataset collected by Transition Town West Kirby.
