The National Allotment Society - National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners Ltd

Clarification re Allotments e-petition

If the 17, 489 people who have signed the petition discussed below had all pledged £2 to the Farm Terrace Allotments fighting fund, http://www.gofundme.com/3ig1fo the campaign group would have reached their fundraising target and those people would have made a significant contribution towards an attempt to protect all allotments for the future.

The Society is aware of a recent e-petition http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/61225 that has been placed on the HM Government web-site regarding plans to free councils from the obligation to provide allotments. The National Allotment Society and others campaigned against these plans in 2011 and they were dropped, in fact David Cameron gave assurances in Parliament at the time that the allotment movement had his full support and that it was extremely important that allotments were made available.

This petition was placed in response to the resurfacing in social media of an article in the Independent newspaper that dates from 2011. http://www.independent.co.uk/property/gardening/exclusive-the-end-of-the-good-life-2277463.html.

The DCLG response to the above petition can be read at the link below

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-response-to-a-petition-on-allotment-duties

The Society is aware that allotments are vulnerable to threats from developers looking for green land to build on - signing this petition can only serve to reinforce to government the importance many people place on allotments and the passion that they feel about them but we feel that we must point out that the particular threat that this petition refers to is no longer current. So it is unlikely it would ever be debated in the House of Commons as the issue has already been resolved.