At a local level, Hull City Council owns 22 allotment sites across the City in which are over 1800 plots. As with other local authorities (I think) a ‘plot’ is oblong in shape and covers 250 square yards. As previously stated this is much more flexible than in the past, and indeed at the other extreme some tenants rent two or three plots. The cost in Hull is currently £67.25 p.a. for a 250 sq. yard plot, a 25% reduction is offered to tenants over the age of 60, to students, the registered disabled and to the unemployed.
Nowhere in the City is a great distance from one of the 22 sites. The largest site is west of Newland Avenue with 245 plots, all the other sites apart from County Road and Pickering Road having below 100 plots, Field Street being the smallest site with just four plots.
Allotment sites are much more secure than they used to be, usually surrounded by security fencing and with tenants only having keys to the main gates. Usually a site has an allotment association with an overseeing committee meeting on a regular basis. One of the main functions of such a committee is to arrange the purchase of a range of products relevant to tenants and to then retail them to tenants at competitive prices, such retail activity often happening at weekends.
Community allotments are where unused ground is identified and, if there is interest from the local community, turned into a communal garden where volunteers, young and old , work together rather than having individual plots. The Hull City Council allotments website tells me that community gardens are organised by the very grand titled firm/organisation Environmental and Management Solutions Ltd. This seemingly yet another traditionally provided by the Council service hived-off to a company/organisation (maybe not-for-profit) which makes knowing who is responsible for what doubly difficult – a personal opinion.
The picture will be explained next time.