Holmes Chapel Allotments

This is the first update on our campaign for allotments in Holmes Chapel for two months. In that time there has been some progress and I will detail the recent events below.

The petition that we submitted to Cheshire East had the desired effect and I now have direct contact with the key personnel in the county council, local council and parish council. It took a while to arrange, but I met with all the relevant councillors to discuss the options for the village.

Following the meeting I was provided with a map that shows all the land that the council own (and therefore the community). I have published the Holmes Chapel Town Plan and it is available for you to view and comment upon. As you will see the majority of council land within Holmes Chapel is alongside the River Dane, which is subject to flooding, and at each school, which are controlled by the education authority. The largest area of community land is at the Comprehensive School, however the school is transferring to academy status in September, therefore the land will be also transferred from council ownership.

In the meeting we discussed the land surrounding the Hermitage play area at the top of the Dane Valley as a possible site for the allotments. However there is only pedestrian access to this site, the land is undulating in places and there are other issues that would make the site unsuitable. The councillors did agree that they would try to include allotment provision as a requirement of the new housing development to be built on the old Fisons site. This is a potential solution, however this is a long term option.

Several members of the Home Grown in Holmes Chapel group and the allotmenteers have suggested that we develop an area of land for a community orchard. Taking this on-board I have suggested to the council that we use the land surrounding the Hermitage play area for this purpose. All the parties at the meeting were very positive about this idea and I am waiting for the cogs to turn within the county council to allow us to move the idea forward.

In my capacity as a member of the Home Grown in Holmes Chapel group, for those of you who are not involved, there are opportunities for you within this project to grow vegetables in the village. So far we have prepared and planted crops beside the old Wine Bar, outside the Health Centre and in planters opposite the village notice boards. We have been offered more land within the village, but we will need more local residents to take on the maintenance of these sites. This opportunity could provide you with a small allotment, where you can grow your own food, although we aim to allow anyone in the village to harvest the vegetables. If you would like to be involved, or if you would like more information, please contact us.

There is still the opportunity to have an allotment at a one acre site in Smallwood. It is a short drive from the village, but would allow you to have your very own allotment. There are already several people on my list for this site, but if you would like to be added to this please contact us.

Our petition for allotments in Holmes Chapel received a response from Cheshire East Council. As expected they have passed all responsibility for allotment provision to their parish and town councils. The clerk of Holmes Chapel Parish Council has informed us that he has approached the appropriate portfolio holder at Cheshire East and the property department has now been authorised to progress the matter further.

In this preliminary phase the site that is being considered is adjacent to the children’s play area behind Elm Drive. I am personally aware that the land beside the Dane Valley is not conducive for growing. The soil is of poor quality and the elevated position above the valley is not ideal. However, due to Holmes Chapel’s unique location, resting on a hill between two rivers and a motorway, any offer to provide land is welcome. With a little work we will be able to increase the quality of the soil and make the best use of the site, if it is made available to us.

Please join us at our first public meeting, on Thursday 12th May at 8pm in Holmes Chapel Methodist Church; where we will be discussing our plans for Home Grown in Holmes Chapel and our hopes for the allotment site.

I have realised that I may have published a spelling error in the website address for Cheshire Landshare during a recent post. The correct website address is www.cheshirelandshare.co.uk.

To date 28 people have signed the online petition for allotments in Holmes Chapel. The petition on the Cheshire East Council website is active until the end of March. To sign the petition click on the link below:
http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?ID=8

It is interesting to note that several county councils are planning to substantially increase the rent for their allotments. The cost of maintaining and managing council allotments has historically been heavily subsidised, but it appears that the cuts in local council funding will result in many county councils charging a commercial rate for their allotments. For example, allotment holders in Stoke-on-Trent have been warned that their rent may increase from £50 per annum up to £150 per annum. Another county council in the south of England has already increased their allotment charges by 400%.

This news has little impact on our campaign as we are not lucky enough to have a council allotment site. And I am not aware that Cheshire East Council will be following their neighbour’s lead and increase their allotments’ annual rent. However, it does highlight to us that the cost of providing an allotment is far greater than many people expect.

We have had a few people drop from the list due to changes in their circumstances, but we still have 55 on our waiting list for an allotment in Holmes Chapel.

To assist our campaign I have created an online petition on the Cheshire East Council website, which will compel the council to provide allotments in Holmes Chapel. There is a well-known section in the Small Holdings and Allotments Act that requires the council to make allotments available if six residents sign a petition to this effect.

Please can you visit the Cheshire East Council website, register, logon and add your name to the petition. The more people that sign the petition the greater weight our case will have. The petition for “Holmes Chapel allotments” is active until 28th March.

To sign the petition click on the link below:
http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?ID=8

The downside to the Act referenced above is that there is no bounding timescale to the provision of allotments. The council have to make best endeavours to provide the allotment site. I am not overly optimistic of this process being successful, which is why I have been in search of land through other means.

Although it has taken more than a year, the Sandbach Allotment campaign looks like it may bear fruit having followed this bureaucratic route. However, they were heavily supported by their local Parish (Town) Council, but were not given a great deal of help by the County Council.

In other news, I have had a reply to the second letter that I sent to Fiona Bruce MP. She has passed on my frustrations to the chief executive of Cheshire East Council. I hope that their response is a little more successful than the last round of communications.

We now have 55 on our waiting list for an allotment in Holmes Chapel, representing over 160 residents. Some of you have taken up the offer from my landlord and will be joining his extended allotment site once construction work is completed in the spring.

In my role as treasurer of Cheshire Landshare I have submitted an application to the Jubilee Big Lottery Fund, in the hope of securing funding to set up Holmes Chapel Community Farm. This is the name for the project, for the purposes of the application, which will include the allotments, a small orchard, bee hives and potentially a few farm animals.

Unfortunately the parcel of land we had been offered in Holmes Chapel looks likely to be unavailable. The two acre field is owned by two families who inherited the land from their parents. One family was sympathetic to our cause; however the second family wishes to keep the land, in the hope that it will provide them with a huge profit at some point in the distant future. I will find out if it is possible to rent the land on a long term lease, but I am not hopeful of a positive outcome.

Following this downbeat news I have written a second letter to our Member of Parliament, Fiona Bruce, regarding our plight and hope that she will again respond positively.

I have now created a simple website for Cheshire Landshare where I will be posting these updates and other news. The website address is www.cheshirelandshare.co.uk. You can also follow us on twitter by visiting twitter.com/landsharer.

In this update I thought I would explain what Cheshire Landshare is – to those of you who may be confused by any references to it. Cheshire Landshare is a community co-operative society myself and few other land sharers setup last year, initially to apply for a grant from the National Lottery Local Food fund. I am not a fan of corporate structures, bureaucracy or politics, but unfortunately to apply for grants, open a bank account and to avoid legal problems this is something we had to do. To date we have secured £2,500 in funds to help set-up the society.

The society is a non-profit community co-operative. This means that all assets and profits are retained by the society, no individual or society member will ever benefit financially. If the society was ever dissolved remaining assets would have to be transferred to an organisation with a similar constitution; for example, the National Trust.

Members of the society, like me, exist to run the co-operative and make decisions. All members have an equal say and a single vote, no matter how many shares they own or how long they have been a member. Each person must buy one share to become a member, and organisations (such as schools, businesses and other societies) can be members too. Your share capital is returned to you when your membership ceases.

Our original optimistic intentions were to acquire land for communities in Cheshire, providing a permanent site where we can grow our own local food. If we manage to acquire land in Holmes Chapel it to be managed by the community co-operative. Therefore if you become a member you will have an equal say in setting the rate for allotment rent, deciding how the site will be managed or amending the society’s own membership fee. Membership is optional; you can just pay the allotment rent.

Following the establishment of the allotments in Holmes Chapel, I would hope that Cheshire Landshare will continue to search for suitable land in Cheshire to help other local communities. The Holmes Chapel site will be used as an example of what can be achieved with the appropriate community support and individual endeavour.

I wrote to you in May 2010 to ask whether there was any council land in our area that we could have access to (C/108/Elliff/FB/SB). I had formed a small community group with some other like minded people in the area to help us and others gain access to land for growing food, farming animals, educating communities and protecting wildlife.

Our non-profit community co-operative, Cheshire Landshare, applied for a grant from the Local Food National Lottery Fund and we successfully reached the second stage of the application. To further the application we required land for our project otherwise the six figure grant will be rejected.

There are no council allotments in my village, Holmes Chapel, and there is only one small council allotment site within an 8 mile radius (in Middlewich). Even though Cheshire has large rural areas, like in our own ward, land in Cheshire is very, very expensive, largely occupied by rich land owners, footballers or business millionaires.

In response to my request you very kindly wrote to the Chief Executive of Cheshire East Council. She, in turn, wrote to her Asset Manager to look for land that may suit our purposes. Frustratingly, since that time, I have had no response from the person in question following numerous telephone calls, messages and e-mails. I gave up and have since been trying to find land in private ownership.

To further illustrate our frustrations a colleague of mine, who is trying to find an allotment site in her town of Sandbach, has had a similar experience dealing with Cheshire East Council. After attending council meetings and submitting petitions there was a great deal of positive talk from councillors, but absolutely no action. In the end the council absolved all responsibility to Sandbach Town Council, in a meeting that including their legal advisors, to make sure their inaction would have no negative repercussions for Cheshire East. Sandbach Town Council has no land holding of its own. Is this how the Big Society works? Are we on our own?

I am writing to you again because I have a Big Society suggestion that may help the hundreds of green volunteer organisations like our own, and also help the councils who are having a difficult time cutting their budgets; but we do need help from the county council to make my Big Idea work.

I have over one hundred people in Holmes Chapel who have signed up to our potential new allotments. This group are willing to volunteer their time, materials, equipment, teaching skills and company sponsorship to enable the project to succeed, but until we have land none of these Big Society contributions will materialise.

This issue seems to be a problem highlighted by other volunteer organisations in the news recently. Cutting the community infrastructure, such as a library or a swimming pool, means that volunteers have nowhere to volunteer their services. No volunteer lifeguards, no volunteer librarians, no volunteer teachers, no volunteer swimming instructors. Volunteers cannot build a library or build a swimming pool or provide a few acres of land.

The number of volunteers we have in Holmes Chapel to start our project is equalled in Sandbach and, I am certain, in every parish throughout Cheshire.

My Big Idea is for the council to lease a few acres of their agricultural land in each parish to a single non-profit organisation (e.g Cheshire Landshare). The volunteer organisation will then provide the land to each community; managing the administration, fund any planning consent and provide the necessary infrastructure for allotments, community gardens or community farms. This will cost the council nothing (it may even provide an income) and allow each community to decide how their land will be utilised. The council will have delivered on their responsibility to provide allotments and green spaces, removed a layer of bureaucracy and the expense of managing the land.

If you can help develop this idea I would be very grateful.

We now have 54 on our waiting list for an allotment in Holmes Chapel, representing over 160 residents.

I received 13 responses to the last update and the possibility of a private land owner in Cranage extending their existing allotment site. Unfortunately he required at least 25 positive requests, to make the extension commercially viable, by the end of January. Due to the pressure of time and insufficient numbers he has decided to renew the lease of the land to the existing agricultural tenant.

However, throughout the year there may be an opportunity to take over a plot from one of the 24 existing tenants, should they decide not to renew their tenancy. He has asked that if you would like to be added to his personal waiting list to e-mail him directly.

I am still optimistic of acquiring land within the Holmes Chapel Parish for a small allotment site. I am in contact with a private land owner who wishes to sell a parcel of land that may be suitable. It is a slow process that I hope will come to a conclusion, one way or the other, in the next few weeks. If successful the land should provide enough space for 20 to 30 small allotments.

We have had a good response so far to our plans for an allotment site within Holmes Chapel. I now have 49 confirmed requests.

Following my letter to landowners requesting land to house the allotments, I have had a single positive response. There are complications, as is often the case, but I hope to have an outcome by the end of the January. In the meantime we will continue our search, so if you are friends with any of the local landowners please ask if they have any land available to rent.

I am also in the process of submitting two grant applications in the hope of securing funding to set up Holmes Chapel Community Farm. This is the name for the project, for the purposes of these applications, which will include the allotments, a small orchard, bee hives and potentially a few farm animals.

Due to the number of people who have requested an allotment it may be fairer to provide smaller allotments than the traditional size. Half an allotment is still an ample 100 square metres. If the land we acquire is limited in area this will help more people enjoy the benefit of an allotment.

To assist with our goals and the grant applications I would like to ask you a few questions, and I would be very grateful if you are able to reply…

Q1. How many residents do you represent who will be sharing the benefits of your allotment? i.e. family members, friends, members of your organisation.

Q2. What is your profession?

Q3. Do you have any skills that may be useful in setting up and running the allotment site? e.g. horticulture, construction, legal, marketing, management.

Q4. What is the maximum you will be willing to pay annually for your allotment? £25, £50, £75 or £100?

Q5. Would you prefer to share the cost, the chores and the produce from a larger shared community allotment?

Q6. Are you interested in becoming involved in the wider aims of Cheshire Landshare? (These are to provide access to land for all local communities to grow food and to educate our children)

Q7. Do you have any other comments or suggestions?

Since placing an article in the Holmes Chapel Parish Council Winter Newsletter we now have 39 confirmed requests for an allotment in Holmes Chapel. The requests include an allotment for the scout group and the local U3A.

To those of you who are new to the area I understand that Holmes Chapel had an allotment site many years ago on the corner of Chester Road and Middlewich Road. This was sold to developers in the 1990s and two large houses were subsequently built on this plot of land. The only council allotment site within eight miles of Holmes Chapel is the Middlewich allotment site on Booth Lane, which contains approximately 30 plots, all of which are taken. There are 59 people on the waiting list for every 100 allotments throughout the UK. These waiting lists often have a wait of several years.

There have been plans to develop the Dane Valley area to the north-west of the village for the last 5 years. The Holmes Chapel and Cranage Parish Councils have draw up plans to improve the area each side of the river surrounding the waste water treatment plant. On the Holmes Chapel side there will be improved access to the river walks and on the Cranage side there will be redeveloped recreational facilities and an allotment site. The allotment site that has been proposed is only a recent addition to this long running plan. The main barrier to the plan being successful is funding (a major problem in recent times) and the (lack of) speed at which the County Council processes these projects.

In reference to the allotments specifically these are within the Cranage Parish and therefore we have no influence over how these will be distributed or when the allotments will be released for public use. The designated land appears to be ripe for occupation, but will require the consent of the Cranage Parish Council before anyone can start work on the allotment site.

Even when this plan is approved and completed there will only be some allotments available to us, assuming the Cranage Parish residents will also be interested in acquiring a plot.

Another recent development is the possible change to County Council funding as a result of the spending revue. This may result in several responsibilities being delegated to the local Parish Council including the management of allotments. This is a potentially positive move, but is another event for the future.

I have recently written to local land owners asking if they have any land that we can lease. No replies have been received to date.

I myself do have an allotment in Byley (3 miles away) that I managed to rent from a private smallholder. He converted a single paddock into ten allotments last year and I was fortunate enough to contact him at the start of this process. I managed to obtain allotments for several friends too. These allotments are all occupied and he has a waiting list for the 10 plots of 11 people.

Although I have an existing allotment I would like an allotment nearer my home in Holmes Chapel so my family can easily access the land and enjoy the benefits of growing our own food.

At this present time we have no available land for the Holmes Chapel allotment site. However we will continue to search for a site within the parish and keep you updated on developments.

I am writing to you as I represent more than forty families, residents and community groups in Holmes Chapel; including the Holmes Chapel & District U3A and Holmes Chapel Scout Group.

We are seeking to lease several acres of agricultural land within walking distance of the village. This is to allow us to set up a community allotment site for local villagers to utilise; to grow their own food, to learn about the environment and to educate the younger generation in the importance of rural activities.

There are no public allotment sites within an 8 mile radius of Holmes Chapel and even those outside this area have waiting lists of several years.

If you have, or are aware of, any suitable land that we can lease please can you contact me by e-mail, telephone or post?

Thank you for your time, and Happy New Year!

I have recently formed a small community group with some other like minded people in the area to help ourselves and others gain access to land for growing food, farming animals, educating communities and protecting wildlife.

There are no public allotments in my village, Holmes Chapel, and those in the region have waiting lists of several years. Even though Cheshire has large rural areas, like in our own ward, land in Cheshire is very very expensive, largely occupied by rich land owners, footballers or business millionaires.

Our community group, Cheshire Landshare, has applied for a grant from the Local Food National Lottery fund and we have successfully reached the second stage of the application.

I was wondering if there is any land available that the council owns that can be leased, donated, sold or rented for this purpose? Not necessarily for an indefinite period of time, but while the land remains unutilised.

I have contacted local councillor Andrew Knowles, who has been very helpful, but we have been unsuccessful when contacting the property services and asset management departments.

I have been encouraged by the ‘big society’ idea that the new coalition government has discussed, putting local communities in more control of their local services. That is in line with what we would like to do, empowering people through education and availability of land to grow food, raise livestock, protect wildlife and to enjoy green spaces.

If you can provide any guidance or help to us we would be very grateful.