FOI requests

[alldigging]

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reque...utgoing-265729

Areas, cost, etc.


I'm pretty certain they'll have blanket bombed every local authority which will possibly mean they miss out on a few again like the comments on this article suggest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...rt-of-comments


Whilst it is really admirable to want to collect allotment data it does mean time and energy is spent by allotment officers chasing up site secretaries for info.

I wish whoever is behind the research would set up a page to log into and post data ourselves.
Or look at the thread on what our allotments cost!

[Newton]

The page is a good idea.......but I suppose the data might be sporadic. Surely if someone is prepared to devote their time to the collection of this data and publishing it we should all benefit! It will highlight malpractice, rent anomalies, demand amongst other things.

I take you point over officer time but I cannot believe that the allotment officer job is too taxing overall and all the info collected should be immediately available to them!

Good on them I say........let's see this years results.....

[alldigging]

Are there any dedicated allotment officers anymore or has the role been put onto someone who does lots of other stuff?
And information changes. One of our plot sizes have changed this week - and we'll be having a new person added. Allotment data isn't static.

New allotments body proposed (From Swindon Advertiser)

This article gives an idea why they might be looking at costs of allotments.

The new association would lease allotment sites and take over the entire administration and management, including grounds maintenance, processing new tenant applications and agreements, managing waiting lists, undertaking site and plot inspections, issuing warning letters and notices to quit, invoicing for and collecting rents, and determining the level of rents.

The council spends £60,000 annually on allotments, including £30,000 on staff, which is covered through £12,000 from tenant rents and a £48,000 subsidy from council tax in non-parished areas. The new group would receive the rent income and some of the subsidy.

--
What is the other 48k spent on?
Water? Skips? Repairs?

When we officially become self-managed our council retains the right to inspect the site - which means someone must still be employed in part capacity to deal with that sort of thing. How many councils still employ a full time allotment officer or two?

For compare and contrast
How much per swim / per park visit do other leisure activities actually cost? How much of that is subsidised.

If allotments are to be retained they must be more sustainable.
That probably means paying the water bill if there is one, and removal of rubbish by plotholders rather than a skip.

[alldigging]

A short introduction to allotment data | allotmentdata

Here's their blog saying why they're collecting it.

Can't see any data on their site though and the link to the guardian article doesn't work.

[Fluorescent green]

I think if a job is worth doing, do it yourself. The point about allotments, is that they are controlled by City Councils, in many areas; where as the law says that parish councils must have that responibility. So if you are not happy with allotment provision, get in touch with your parish council. If you havnt got one, form one.

[polc1410]

Well... From my experience finding out anything about plots, plot costs, who to contact, etc is like a dark science.

The best thing a council can do is publish it on the internet and then they can apply section 22 exemption to the FOI. Everyone wins. Oh.. that is unless the council wants to make it so hard to get a plot so that they can sell the land ;-)

[Farida Vis]

Thanks for highlighting our research and our recent FOI requests alldigging.

Just to give you a bit of background to the project: The original research was not funded and was done as a first attempt to get a better sense of what is going on with allotment data across the UK, building on the work Margaret Campbell's been doing with waiting list data (http://www.transitiontownwestkirby.o...urvey_2011.pdf).

As people on here have also highlighted, allotment data is not easy to collect and most of the time not readily available on council websites. That is why, in the end, we decided to 'blanket bomb' the councils through FOI. But having done that of course made sure that the data was made available. As you point out it was written up in this Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...s-waiting-list

The full dataset is available via the 'get the data' link, but this is the direct link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...FE&output=html

At the time our research was also featured in various other places, for example:
You want an allotment? Come back in 2026... Gardeners forced to wait years to get land | Mail Online

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/News...for-allotments

It has also been picked up by other interested parties, including policy makers. I presented the work at a workshop hosted by the European Commission last year. The full report is here:
Report on Using Open Data, 19 - 20 June 2012, Brussels

These are the slides from our presentation at the event: Allotment (publics): an open data and data driven journalism perspe...

I am now working at the University of Sheffield and lead a related, now funded project called 'Everyday Growing Cultures'. As part of that project we are updating the current data set. So that's what the current round of FOI requests are linked to. Now that the project has proper funding and because the earlier work has attracted interest from a number of relevant organisations (NSALG, ARI etc.) we hope to publish a report of our findings at the end of the summer.

I am interested in the suggestion of having a page where people could upload data themselves. We would certainly be happy to set something up if you think people will use it. Or alternatively just be pointed in the direction of such a page if anyone knows of such initiatives. We are of course very interested in hearing people's views on how to collect allotment data and especially how we might do this differently/better.

One of the main reasons I got interested in this work is because I've had a plot myself for 13 years and was lucky to only wait for two months at the time. The waiting list for our site is around 15 years now... I was our site's secretary for nearly a decade and after leaving the committee decided that it would be a good idea to see how I could contribute to the growing debate around the waiting list crisis, the growing costs of having allotments and so on, knowing all too well about these issues from our own site.

In the end we decided to try and build a national dataset in order to get a better sense of what's going on across the country. To keep the task as manageable as possible for now we are concentrating only on sites for which the council has responsibility.

The allotmentdata site is in dire need of an update (I will check all links!) and I hope to get round to that soon, but as this was only a small side project at the time I could only work on it very sporadically. I have much more time for it now. If anyone on this forum is interested in writing a guest post, do please let me know. And any suggestions and feedback on the project are always welcome!

Again, thanks for your interest in the work and I hope my response has been useful.

Happy digging!

[alldigging]

Thanks for the links!

As well as a national dataset someone needs to produce a set of documents for residents to present to councils to increase the number of allotments and spaces for growing.

There is land out there available - and self management as an option might be something council's could consider.

But there needs to be a real support system to help people.

I'd like to see research done on to ways councils can free up land and make it available to groups for allotmenting.
Those waiting lists won't solve themselves.

[Farida Vis]

No problem! Thanks for your further suggestions. Part of the current Everyday Growing Cultures project does exactly as you suggest, tries to find additional land for food growing purposes. More details here: Mapping Trafford for Growing Land. | The kindling Trust

We are organising these walks in Manchester (Old Trafford) and Sheffield for now, but hope of course that our toolkit will be able to help others do the same in their location.

[alldigging]

Thanks Farida! that project looks really interesting!