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A message from  the Council Allotments Office –

The updated Allotment Policy is currently in draft format. It will be issued for consultation to internal stakeholders within the Council in January before it is issued for wider consultation across the district, which will include all plot holders, Ward Members and other interested groups. We’ll be in touch in due course with a notification to advertise the wider consultation period.

We would welcome your comments and feedback on the updated draft policy once issued.

The plot recovery works are progressing. The site investigation phase of the work has recently been completed and the reports from this exercise have now been received for each site. This information will be used to inform the main site work, and we have recently met with the Council’s procurement team to begin the process of mapping out the tender exercise which will need to take place during the next few months. Some of the works required are preparatory in nature (i.e. hedge cutting and tree works) and may be carried out by in-house Council teams – we are putting together a plan to commence these works as soon as possible.

The following allotment sites will benefit from the funding:

After an extensive review of the waiting list, the numbers for each allotment site have reduced considerably. Every person on the waiting list was contacted either by email or letter and requested to reply within 14 days to confirm their interest in remaining on the list for an available allotment plot.  Those who did not reply have been removed from the lists.  The current waiting list is now less than 600 which is a considerable reduction from the previous total.

Plots have been continuously offered, and since June there are now an additional 71 new plot holders across the district.

In July 2023, £300,000 was allocated to the allotments office to bring back neglected allotments into use. However, two years later, none of this work had started, rents had been raised by nearly 100%, many concessionary rates had been removed ( greatly affecting community based projects and those on low incomes) , inspections were claiming plots were not being managed when the plot holders felt they were, and there seemed to be little movement on letting out of empty plots – allowing previously good plots to be fall into disuse. On some sites, where the allotments office say a plot is unusable, site contacts feel they are usable with a bit of work. 

A petition signed by more than 150 plot holders  was submitted to the full council in September 2024 to raise all these issues, and a subsequent Scrutiny Committee received a report from the council as to how they are going to address the problems. Due to the financial situation of the council, they say the previously subsidised allotments service has to break even and the rent rises remain. Some community group plot holders are still in negotiation with the  council on their rental charges. 

The response from the council  included two things – firstly a report on how they are proposing to  spend the money allocated from Public Health, the CIL and Section 106 money to bring neglected allotments back into use, and secondly a proposal of an  update of the previous allotment policy (created in 2015)  to help manage the allotments service. Sites identified for clearing plots and making them usable are

Haworth Road BD9

Bowling Park BD4

Bullroyd BD8

Cecil Avenue BD7

Derby Road BD3

Harewood Street BD3

Stancare BD3

Work started in September 2025 on Stanacre, and the allotments office are contacting the waiting list now so that plots can be let as soon as they are ready.

Two meetings have now been held in July and September to get plot holders input into the revised policy before it goes out for wider consultation. Feedback from these meetings says that the new policy proposals appear to put even more restrictions onto plot holders and could be seen as making it even more onerous to rent a plot and it doesn’t yet share an overall ‘ strategy’ or vision for allotments in the Bradford district.