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Housing and Regeneration Bill

That was an excellent short debate. I am grateful that the noble Baroness has created an opportunity for this. As she knows, I have a great deal of sympathy for what she said, for reasons that will become clear. I am sorry that I missed the debate that started in 1649; I would have enjoyed that. This is a landmark year, being the centenary of the 1908 Act, and we are right to mark it. She is also right—this has been echoed around the Committee—that the benefits of allotments to the community and to the individual are legion. There is nothing but support for the provision of allotments in my department on my behalf. I shall start by taking the amendment to Amendment No 58, and I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said. Essentially, we are dealing, and have been since the first protections were created in law, with the fact that allotments are the responsibility of the local authority, and rightly so. For the reasons that have been given, they must remain so. The noble Lord’s amendment about management therefore underscores the point, as he explained it, about the importance of retaining that status. Allotments are different in so many ways. They are the only bits of green space in the community that are given unique special protection by legislation, reinforced by planning guidance. They are not treated as previously developed land, which is crucial. It is difficult for them to be disposed of or built on. When you look at where we have come from, with the loss of allotments since the war, it is a dramatic and rather sad picture. It remains the case, though, that a council can dispose of an allotment in exceptional circumstances only if it can fully justify to the Secretary of State for Communities that there is a need for a change of use against robust criteria. The fact that those criteria are robust does not conceal that we have had to take action in recent years to slow up the loss of allotments. Following a DETR Select Committee inquiry in 1998, we strengthened and reinforced in 2002 the criteria for the disposal of statutory allotments by planning policy guidance 17, which ensured that communities’ need for allotments would be taken into account and that the local authority would have to show that an allotment was surplus to need. We come back to the point regarding the key to ensuring that allotments are there for those who want them. It was useful to have the examples about the size of waiting lists, because there is no doubt that in some parts of the country we are seeing a renaissance of the allotment and a different profile of the allotmenteer, as it were. I have visited the Dig for Victory allotments in St James’s Park, which I recommend to noble Lords; they are magnificent and involve a lot of schoolchildren. I also recommend the allotments that I visited in south London, which showed beyond doubt that they were a resource for a very mixed community. All sorts of fruit and vegetables are grown by different ethnic communities, and there are even beehives. It is a place where the communities meet and people mentor each other in the growing of fruit and vegetables. My noble friend Lord Howarth was absolutely right—allotments are wonderful places. The key to improvement and the key to achieving the sort of changes that the noble Baroness and I want is not a change in the law, but better and more systematic implementation of it. Therefore, in the past year we have tried to engage positively with, and to promote good practice by, allotment organisations and those who mentor in allotment offices, for example. That has given us a better understanding of the issues. In June last year we published revised guidance for plot holders and in the past year we have worked closely with the LGA, which has been sympathetic and proactive to the needs of allotment officers, which are the key to this. They look after allotments—whether by protecting them from vandalism, making sure that the waiting list is not growing out of control or ensuring that allotment holders are informed about prospects and possibilities. They are the people who make a difference. We updated and published a second edition of Growing in the Community in March, to which the noble Baroness referred. That reflected the significant developments in the allotments movement since 2001 and highlighted their importance. It provided an up-to-date account of policy and a guide to the legislation by making it absolutely clear that no local authority should be in any doubt about what the law says has to be done if there is any question of allotments being under challenge for whatever reason, and that nor should there be any doubt as to the rights of the allotment holders. What gave me confidence that that was the right way to proceed was when I hosted a round-table meeting with all the key allotment organisations in November last year. Together we agreed that the legislation was robust, but that there were considerations of clarity in the application of the legislation. Going forward with those organisations and working with local authorities to follow up how they are managing their allotments is very important. In brief, Section 23 of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 places a duty on local authorities, except inner London boroughs, to provide sufficient allotments where they consider there is a demand for them in their area. The planning system, through PPG17 on planning for open space, sport and recreation and planning policy statement 3, provides the framework for protection and provision that I have been talking about. In particular, PPG17 advises local authorities to make provision for all types of public open space and expects local authorities to undertake robust assessments of local needs and audits. That suggests to me that a local authority, under PPG17, is in a position to make some very positive choices about the potential of its brownfield land or anything that may be available that is convertible to allotments. Robust assessment might create an opportunity for assessing what a local authority means by sufficiency. I cannot answer the question here, because it is a local diagnosis. PPS3 is a positive response to and recognition of the fact that we need more open space. In those definitions, there is room for allotments as well. Furthermore, we should recognise that allotments are by no means always lost to housing. A significant proportion goes to other forms of green space—the noble Baroness mentioned one—and sometimes to upgraded green spaces. Frankly, one cannot afford to be too sentimental about allotments. Some of them are in a pretty awful condition and have reached the point of being an eyesore rather than of being of use to a community. That is not to say that I advocate their being used for anything else, but they should be used for what they are intended. Sometimes, upgraded green space gives children and hard-pressed families more access to space. One has to make proper judgments about them. The noble Baroness was right that we are looking at greatly increased demand and, therefore, not at a central solution. The HCA is for the reasons given by my noble friend Lady Ford not the right agency to undertake provision, although I would be very surprised if in some of the regeneration packages put together by English Partnerships allotment space had not been allocated. In some of the growth areas—where we look at provision, for example, of community forests—space for allotments will certainly be designed into the master plans. I hope that the noble Baroness is reassured that we are serious in our intent, that we are using more appropriate levers and that we will keep the situation under close scrutiny.