Battle on allotment rent increase - The result

[redbudgie]

Aberdeen Plotter, I've been reading your thread with interest.
Have you had a satifactory outcome or is it still ongoing?
Maybe they need the rent for Marschial College?
Although I live in Aberdeen I don't have an allotment plot and grow very small scale in my own garden

[SarzWix]

Just bringing this back to the top, in light of the Lancashire council attempting to increase allotment rents from £35 to £200

[Aberdeenplotter]

Never noticed that post by Redbudgie which is a pity. Just for info though. My struggle with Aberdeen City Council is ongoing but hopefully will come to a head after the end of this month. I was given a years notice to quit after refusing to paythe rent demanded but bear in Mind that the Scottish Finance minister John Swinney stated in reply to a written Parliamentary question that a local authority is not entitled to collect rent for allotments using regulations that have not been confirmed by the Scottish Ministersin terms of section 6(1)Allotments (Scotland)Act 1892. Aberdeen Council has not had its rent regulation so confirmed and in fact even denies having made such a regulation. Very odd since they have confirmed setting a rent - set is a synonym of regulate. Watch this space as I have absolutely no intention of vacating my plot and I want the Council to take this into court

[Aberdeenplotter]

p.s. Remember Scotland's Allotments legislation is different from that down south

[Snadger]

Good luck with it all AP!

[BarleySugar]

Good luck to anyone who is still battling unfair increases. We, as an allotment association set our own rents when we started as a self managed site. We do only pay a peppercorn rent (£1 per year) to the council, but we also know they rent the land off the landowner at £125 per year, because we negotiated the rate with him initially. Therefore the council is meeting its legal obligation to provide allotments for the princely sum f £124 per year.
We were not given any money to help with start up costs, we had to apply for grants from various bodies to get water connected, pay for planning permission, car parking and planting of hedging (the latter 2 required to comply with the planning permission granted). The rent we have set should cover the cost of keys, water rates (metered), insurance and such maintainance as required for fencing and gates. We have small, medium and large plots (£20, £25 and £30) per year, but no concessions. A large plot is equivalent to half a standard size plot, as we had limited space. Rents are to be reviewed on a yearly basis, and increased or decreased according to the running costs. Improved facilities in the future will be funded by grants or fundraising activities undertaken by the Allotment
Association, not through increased rents, although if individuals want to donate funds these have been gratefully accepted.
For any allotment sites who are faced with the decision for or against self management, we have not been going for a full year yet, but with willing volunteers it may well be a way to keeps costs down.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Hi Barley Sugar,

our rents were increased by 80% across the board in 2008. We weren't told about the increases and only found out because the details were sent to an external body as part of a consultation about our allotments from which the Council, in its wisdom decided its allotment holders should be excluded because we might want our representations to be taken into account. I kid you not.

I was sent a copy of that document by a member of that external body and discovered that half plots were charged at more than half the cost of a full plot. After protesting about this to the Council, instead of the rent for a half plot being reduced to half the rent of a full plot, the council increased the cost of a full plot the following year by a further 72% so that it became twice the rent of a half plot. Nice eh!!

As if that wasn't bad enough, the Council in an Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment tried to represent that increase as being necessary to right the wrong of some people having a water supply and paying for it (the cost was £1.05 per plot)and some having a water supply and not paying for it. Some 200 full sized plots were affected so to equalise the situation, the minimum necessary interference would have cost the allotment holders just over £200. The increase of £20 per full sized plots stood to raise £4000 for the Council - not the minimum necessary interference they said it was. To compound matters,not only do those who have a water supply now pay for it but those who don't also pay because the water charges are now included with the rent. The Councils total water bill was just over £1000).

We managed to get this before the Council and were stunned to learn that Council Officers had told the elected members that our plots were twice the size of those in Edinburgh and Glasgow which was a nonsense. Not only did they not know the size of the plots in Edinburgh and Glasgow but they didn't even know the size of ours.( They later set out to measure our plots) and they told the elected members our full sized plots were 300 squ mtrs instead of squ yards. There's a 20% difference.

We subsequently discovered that to increase rents by arbitrary amounts falls foul of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations but the City Solicitor rejected the concept that these regulations could apply to allotments. She then failed to respond to being told that the guidance notes to these regulations makes it clear that a landlord is considered to be a supplier and a tenant a consumer.

Enter the discovery of the English Court case Harwood v Borough of Reigate and Banstead in which it was held to be unlawful to discriminate against allotment holders by applying larger increases to them than were applied to other users of council owned recreational services. Aberdeen City Solicitor rejected the possibility of that decision being valid in Scotland and did not respond when it was made clear that a Scottish Court will rely on decisions in other jurisdictions if there is no domestic precedent.


Plot rents in Aberdeen were increased by 80% followed by 72% when the charges for other users of Council facilities were only increased by 10% (confirmed after making FOI requests)

At no points did the Council try to establish what the fair rent was for the use of the land it lets for allotments as allotments and that is the measure provided for in law.

Anyway. I had a letter from the City Council today and it has been confirmed that they "will not be seeking to eject me from the allotments after 31 January 2012 , without a Court Decree sanctioning such action." although they have added that court proceedings will become inevitable. Bring it on. That is where the situation will be resolved.

[Thelma Sanders]

Good luck with the continuing fight AP!

[Aberdeenplotter]

to follow on from the quantum of rent specified by law in Scotland, "Land let by a local authority under the Allotments (Scotland) Acts, 1892 to 1926, for use as an allotment shall be let at the fair rent for such use."

So what is such use? In a reply to a parliamentary question John Swinney for the Scottish Government stated "Section 19 of the Allotments (Scotland) Act 1922 defines an allotment garden as an area not exceeding 40 poles which is wholly or mainly cultivated by the occupier for the production of vegetable crops for consumption by himself or his family. "

So land let for growing vegetables eh. What can we compare that with? I would venture to suggest that farmland could be a useful comparison and I found a case that has been heard in The Scottish Land court where the rent for a large farm was determined to be an average of £30 per acre. (The moonzie case). That is less than £2 per full sized plot. Aberdeen Councils charges exceed £1100 per acre. Yes I know the administration costs money, as does the upkeep (of which we get none. We even have to supply our own fencing)but the law only provides for the fair rent for the use as allotments not a bit in addition to cover their costs.

p.s. The farm also has a large farmhouse, a range of buildings, houses which are let and susbsidy from the Single Farm Payment.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Flash of inspiration that may help you guys south of the border. If your council is trying to increase your plot rents by applying increases higher than the increases applied to users of other council owned recreational facilities insist that they carry out an Equality and Human Rights impact assessment. Any such assessment will no doubt be produced at a meeting of elected members of the Council at which time you can point out any inaccuracies(that is if they say you are not being discriminated against and you can prove that you are) and you can then drop the Harwood v Reigate and Banstead Council case in their lap. Do this at an early stage and make the request via your local Councillor if possible. It would be unreasonable not to complete such an assessment especially if there were allegations of discrimination

[Jeanied]

Good idea AP - but the only problem is the EHCR impact assessments I have seen haven't been worth the (virtual) paper they were written on - it is usually treated as a tick box activity. Also they can weasel out of dealing with identified negative impact on a group of people with protected characteristics by pointing to something they do in a completely different sphere of activity.

[Aberdeenplotter]

The assessment they did for one of our increases was ridiculous. I've referred to that on the Plot Rent history page on our website but at least if there is an assessment it provides something concrete to dispute and the harwood case as I said has provided something they must accept as precedent.

[Aberdeenplotter]

I can't remember what section 10 of the english 1950 act says but I think it's worded around something like the amount a reasonable person would be prepared to pay. No reasonable person would be expected to pay an increase that is unlawful. I'm not going to check that wording but it's certainly something that
plotters down south need to bear in mind

[Aberdeenplotter]

Couldn't resist.

Here it is - land let by a Council under the Allotments Acts, 1908 to 1931, for use as an allotment shall be let at such rent as a tenant may reasonably be expected to pay for the land if let for such use on the terms (other than terms as to rent) on which it is in fact let:

Not a million miles from The Scottish Act

[Aberdeenplotter]

and after a nights sleep, here is a reasonable argument that after all is said and done is based on the outcome of a court action. (I think the correct expression may well be "based on case law"

Allotment tenants should not be reasonably expected to pay a rent that includes an increase in the charges for the use of recreational facilities that will have the effect of imposing upon them an unfair and excessive charge.

I've used wording based on the judgement from the Harwood v Reigate and Banstead Council case which anyone interested can see here. http://bucksburnallotments.co.uk/Doc...%20Council.pdf