Bristol most difficult city to get an allotment in UK

Bristol has been named as the most difficult city in the UK to get an allotment.

A new investigation by Greenpeace has found that Bristol has the longest waiting lists for allotments in the UK, with 7,630 people waiting for an allotment.

Bristol was followed by Sunderland, Portsmouth, Southampton, Edinburgh and Manchester.

There are 112 allotments in Bristol, of which 18 are not administered by Bristol City Council, and all of them have waiting lists.

The average annual fee for a small allotment in Bristol is around £30, while larger plots cost around £150.

Plans for an allotment on the outskirts of Bristol which could see 700 more plots available to people in the city, has faced opposition from locals in North Somerset.

Ashley Vale Allotments, which stretches from St Werburgh’s to Ashley Down, has the longest waiting list in Bristol – photo: Martin Booth

The company behind the proposals, Roots Allotments, has been forced to go back to the drawing board by North Somerset Council after locals in Abbots Leigh argued that the site was on greenbelt land and wouldn’t benefit the locals.

To obtain the allotment data, Greenpeace sent freedom of information requests to every local authority in England, Scotland and Wales.

The investigation found that nearly 175,000 applications for allotments were stuck in waiting lists with people in limbo for around three years on average.

Some people have waited for up to 15 years for an allotment, with waitings lists in England doubling in length since 2011, campaigners said.

Greenpeace said the findings showed there was a huge demand from people wanting to grow their own food as a way to improve their health, save costs on shopping and reduce their carbon footprint.

Daniela Montalto, Greenpeace UK forests campaigner, said: “Allotment waiting lists demonstrate a huge desire from people to be part of the solution to our broken food system but without access to land, the many benefits of community food growing to people, nature and the climate are being stifled.

“The Government must support councils to act as well as take seriously its own role in creating systemic and lasting change to the food system.

“Crucial steps include proper support for farmers to transition to climate, people and nature-friendly farming as well as measures to reduce our climate footprint abroad including a ban on imports of soya and other agricultural commodities that drive deforestation in places like Brazil.”

Artists and volunteers from Greenpeace carried a 30-metre-long living artwork made of seed paper to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on Wednesday.

They urged the government to enable people to exercise their rights to allotments as part of the solution to food insecurity, the cost of living crisis and the climate emergency.

The artwork was embedded with clusters of seeds and ash from burned Amazon forests spelling out the message “We the 174,183 demand allotments”, and was a visual representation of the data collected by Greenpeace.

Main photo: Elizabeth Dalziel/Greenpeace

Read next:

• Bristol’s allotment growers of African heritage take centre stage at Afrika Eye
• Controversial allotment on outskirts of Bristol rejected
• NHS recovery allotment requires support to continue

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