Park and Ride planned for my site!

[greengas]

We shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our place to grow our own.
We shall ride out the storm of redevelopment.
We shall defend to the death our rented soil, aiding eachother like good allotment neighbours to the utmost of our strength.
We shall go on to the end.
Even though large swaths of land and many old and famous allotments have fallen or may fall into the grip of developers and all the odious apparatus of trendy flat construction, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end.
We shall fight in the press, we shall fight on the radio and the streets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the shopping centres, we shall defend our allotments, whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the weekends, we shall fight on the allotment grounds, we shall fight in the ballot boxes and in the free-ads papers, we shall fight in our letters to MPs;
We shall never surrender.

Thanks i hope you dont mind but I will use this its brilliant. I have already copied and pasted it on to this is Bristol message board with a very slight change.

[organic]

He was some orator, wasn't he.

Dare I ask what the change was?

If anyone asks who wrote it - point them to my blog... I'd suggest pointing them to Churchill's blog but I doubt he updates that very often.

[greengas]

He was some orator, wasn't he.

Dare I ask what the change was?

If anyone asks who wrote it - point them to my blog... I'd suggest pointing them to Churchill's blog but I doubt he updates that very often.

I added roads to the bit about trendy development!

[greengas]

Hello again do any clever grapes out there know how I could find out if this piece of land has a covenant on it? The local coucilor says he will find out but I'm not sure. We have recieved a leaflet today called the inner Bristol transport plan and there it is our site is now the preffered site the other 4 ruled out

[chriscross1966]

A solicitor would call it a Local Search I believe.,.. the covenant should be attached to the deeds


chrisc

[greengas]

A solicitor would call it a Local Search I believe.,.. the covenant should be attached to the deeds


chrisc

Thanks I have now established it is a statutory site so thats a start!

[herring8]

Best of luck - wich you well

[matthew2riches]

Arse*hol*!!!!!!!!!!!

If the council want to do something, they'll just break their own rules and do it anyway. Just look at the allotments in London where they have built the Olympic stadium!! :-(

Good luck with your battle!

[greengas]

Just a quick update on park and ride plans. The council had a meeting a few weeks back and agreed on proposals and have submitted there plans to The department of transport for funding. They had to do this before 31st March or they would have had to wait another year, I think it is being rushed due to the possibility of change of goverment in May.

We are now in the process of setting up an allotment association and have our first inaugral meeting tonight where people will put themselves forward and be voted in. I am not sure whether to go for one of the posisitions as I do not know what it involves?

They are-
Chairperson
Secretary
Treasurer
Seed co-ordinator (This one caught my eye)
NSALG co-ordinator
Web and IT support

I think that is everything may have missed something but you get an idea, I would really like to put my name forward for something so what do grapes think would be quite rewarding but not too time consuming?

[Hans Mum]

i'm secretary of our association, and it does take a fair bit of time but our site is quite large and needed dragging into the 21st century If your fellow officers are computer savvy its quite easy as you communicate via email etc.
There are some days when i go to site and tell everyone i'm tending my plot and i'm not getting involved in site issues which works well. If you want your site to stay you have to be prepared to get involved, which is why i volunteered

[greengas]

i'm secretary of our association, and it does take a fair bit of time but our site is quite large and needed dragging into the 21st century If your fellow officers are computer savvy its quite easy as you communicate via email etc.
There are some days when i go to site and tell everyone i'm tending my plot and i'm not getting involved in site issues which works well. If you want your site to stay you have to be prepared to get involved, which is why i volunteered

So what does being a secretary involve? Our site has 98 plots!

[organic]

It might be worth going to Land Registry to see if they have records about the site. There's a chance they won't but if they do, paying the small fee will get you all the relevant documents and, if I'm not massively mistaken, that includes any covenants attached to the land like who's responsible for upkeep of paths, boundary treatments (fences etc) and so on.

That'd probably be my first port of call at this stage anyway.


If you'd rather get a solicitor on the case - it might be worth trying to get one to work for free in exchange for you name-dropping them whenever you can in dealing with the press... and on that front - have you got the press involved yet? If not you really should. Also, we're now approaching an election - get in touch with every would-be representative and get them on board with the campaign "fighting for local people" and all that baloney.

Your fight is 2-fold at the minute. You want to save the site, and if that can't happen (and to be brutally honest, the odds are stacked against you even with covenants as councils will happily bulldoze grade 2 listed historic greenbelt parkland for a sports centre that could go in loads of other places - allotments don't stand a chance) you need to be making as much noise as possible in order to get a site - preferably bigger than the current one so they can clear some waiting list at the same time - with every feature under the sun (including properly secure fencing all the way around).

Don't let up or let the story quiet down in the press - if you do they'll be far more likely to just close your site and open a tiny one 10 miles away to "replace" it.

[weekendwellies]

It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare.

Wishing you all the very best with your fight, and if there is anything we can do to help please let us know.

People power has proven itself in a small way on this very forum a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, so it can work.

[greengas]

Just got back from first meeting I am now seed scheme co-ordinator for our society. I have also found out tonight there is no covenant on the land, really good we have a society though. I have not got a clue what I have to do so will start researching now

[selfraising]

Hope it all goes well