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.

Below we highlight the ten items we thought people might want to find on a council allotment website. For each ‘information item’ present on the website, we awarded a point and to keep things simple, we examined ten items in order to produce meaningful as well as easy to understand overall scores. On the whole allotment council websites can do with significant improvement in providing information to prospective plot holders. In England 176 council websites (>80%) scored lower than 5 points out of 10; for Wales this was true for 16 (almost all) websites and for 13 (just over half) of the Scottish ones we looked at.

The ten items were chosen based on the shared judgement of the project team and on the principal investigator’s years of experience as a committee member on a Manchester allotment site of which many were spent managing the site’s waiting list. The ten points included in our analysis are therefore a combination of such well known ‘frequently asked questions’ along with a number of other information items we identified as good practice for different reasons, for example including a map of allotment site locations. The list below shows the ten information items in full.

1. Number of allotment plots in the Council
2. Information per site: name, location etc.
3. Details of site secretary
4. Map with allotment locations
5. Total number of people on waiting lists
6. Number of people on waiting list per site
7. Information on how to apply for an allotment
8. Information on how to monitor your place on waiting list
9. Information on how plots are allocated
10. Cost of renting an allotment                                             

In general recommendations may include:

• Providing the name of the allotment site and giving further information: a phone number of the site secretary, address, postcode. Where appropriate the website could link to individual allotment websites (if these exist) or give a more detailed location, including the address.
• Consider including a map of allotment locations. This could potentially contain further information per site, for example the number of people on the waiting list per site. It can be very useful to get a quick overview of where the very long waiting lists are, and where it might be possible to get an allotment more quickly.
• It is useful for people to understand how waiting lists are managed and how plots are allocated, either at council level or per individual site. Although it would involve some time to set up, an electronic ‘ticketing system’ is worth considering. Each person waiting is assigned a number (again this can be done at council level or site level) and the website could provide a central location to monitor your place on the waiting list. For example you would then be able to see the number of the ticket of the person who was last offered a plot on the same site. This gives a good indication of how the waiting list is progressing. This would also mean that individual site secretaries or indeed the council allotment officer potentially has fewer ‘follow-on’ waiting list queries to deal with directly.
• It is useful to highlight the cost of renting an allotment and to clearly state if this is for a full size or half size plot. It is also useful to inform people if they are likely to first be given a half size plot or have access to a full size plot straight away.  Other costs, such as water rates and possible discounts are worth stating clearly also.

                                                                                 

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.

We look forward to working with Greater Manchester and Sheffield Councils on further discussing how our recommendations might be implemented, improving the information provision on council allotment pages for  residents interested in growing their own food.