Extortionate plot rents............

[polc1410]

There is £60,000 generated in land rents across the County. A lot of this is ploughed back into individual sites with fence repairs, road repairs, drainage repairs etc but only if the individual sites make a written request for assistance.

OK that doesn't seem unreasonable. Peraps the officer should be visiting sites and discussing with the local committee etc but it seems reasonable that they make a formal request and that different sites requests should be stacked up and prioritised.

Road repairs? Maybe they wanna spend some of that money on the public roads...!!

The person they make this request to is the allotment officer, who from next year will already have eaten up half of the land lease income with his own wage.

But if he wasn't there who would do it? If he wasn't there who would make sure rent was paid? Who would make sure plots are cultivated and so sites aren't falling into disrepair...?

While the rest of the council may want to sell all the allotments off for homes the allotment officer presumably wants to keep them as they fund his job. No allotments - No job.

Surely if he could set up a sponsorship deals with local and national companies, they could advertise there wares at the sites and on any paperwork generated?

There is a distinct difference between sponsorpship and advertising. Where would they advertise at the sites? My site has a notice board that is never read and thats it. Paperwork... sponsorship would likely result in just a company logo on the paperwork (maybe with a web address). Proper advertising would say what they do. Still have my doubts you'd get anything like £30k of advertising or sponsorship on that basis...

By my back of an envelope calculation there must be about 400 plots being managed by the allotment officer. So lets assume you get a greenhouse / polytunnel company interested in sponsorship. As a rough count on my allotment only 1 in 4 has a tunnel / greenhouse on the plot. I guess maybe another 1 in 4 has something at home. So either they are targeting to 200 plot holders who have nothing and trying to get them to consider getting something, or the 200 who have something and might want to convert to something newer. You'd be doing very well to convert 1/4 of the 200 to something newer. Same for those with nothing. So you have 100 'punters' who you are actually selling to, but unless the council is going to insist you use their sponsor you still have to actually sell to them. Based on other experiences you'd be lucky if 40% bought from the sponsor. Cheapo poly tunnel costs <£100, expensive costs >£1000 but I'll guess a typical one costs £400. Thats £16k of income to a poly tunnel company. I'd be stunned if 70% of that wasn't material and labour (afterall if its not lotty holders will build from scratch). Leaves you less than £5k for 'advertising, profit etc'. They'll still have all their other advertising to do. So I'd be thinking they'd maybe consider £500 of sponsorship. That means you need 60 sponsors... and that means you'd have competitors sponsoring and so the ROI will drop because the market remains the same size.

Now consider how better they might spend that £500... A quarter page add in GW Magazine (biggest market share of gardeners and good loyalty) costs £2.5k. Thats read by over a million people who are presumably interested in gardening so a potential target audience. So thats 1/4p per reader. Assuming that every plot holder is a couple thats 800 potential readers, and I'll grant you possibly a more targetted audience... but £500 of sponsorship is still 62.5p per read.

Advertising is a multi million pound enterprise and I'm sure that relevant firms would appreciate havng a captive audience of gardeners, rather than wasting money on a blanket approach to the population, many of whom will be non gardeners.

But allotmenteers are a frugal lot. They build things from pallets, they save seeds, they fertilise with free horse muck. They don't like parting with their cash (hence the thread!!). Advertising in GYO, GrowIt and KG would reach a simillar audience demographic but who at least are prepared to hand over some of their hard earned cash for the magazine so may be more likely to hand over cash to buy something too.

I have organised events myself and sponsorship IS out there for the asking. The event I organised was for one day and attracted only 50 people yet we were able to get £1000 worth of sponsorship!

BUT - how much time did it take you to organise that. Getting £30k might take 30 times as long. Lets assume it took you 3 days phoning, emailing, writing and chasing. That would be 90 days of the council worker's time which is 4.5months. So you get two thirds of his time and obviously you already don't have enough of his time as you didn't know what he does...

£1k divided by 50 people is £20 per head for an audience who were fussed enough to turn up for the event and were 'captive' rather than a logo on a letter that may be ignored. You have 4-800 people to target - Thats only £8 -16k...

Now for the extra complication. I've seen discussions from some councils about illegally constructed polytunnels using water or gas pipe as frames. The suggestion being that 2" Gas pipe certainly isn't legally obtainable by the public and so may have been stollen. I have no problem with a council raising that as a concern, but I would if they were sponsored by polytunnelsRus.com There could be numerous other conflicts - you ask for improved drainage and get back a "sorry we can't do the work this year as we don't have enough money" sponsored by RasiedBeds.co.uk

Times are tough... business wants to make sure its getting an ROI on advertising and sponsorship and I'm far from convinced they would.

[Snadger]

If the allotment officers main job is a 'rent collector' for allotment sites, surely that can be done by the people in charge of Council House rents and repairs? I would imagine its all computerised anyway.

Or better still, give me a brown envelope with 15K in it (half his wage) and I'll sort it out for them!

[Alison]

Just got my annual bill today, £23.10 so basically the same as last year. I think this is great value.

[mrgrower]

Ok ours is a band C allotment due to it's years of neglect, and it works out at 17p a sq meter the plots are being measured this Monday coming and lucky I was there yesterday when we had a site inspection due to continued complaints from the garden club of the help needed by them.
As one of the guys looked at my plot said OK your growing area is from there to there as that is your shed???????? NO it isn't it's a comunal shed situated on my plot Oh OK then your growing area is there to there ( HALF the area he first stated ) still gives me the area behind the shed that would be going to weed to grow fruit bushes etc on so a big saving for me...

Gonna be a lovely day in Manchester. I'm full of a cold but nothing will keep me away from the plot today.

[Newton]

So you are not paying for your whole plot? Shouldn't you fess up! Didnt you read what pol said......

[Newton]

Just read polc posts......very considered and sensible argument.......well done!

[mrgrower]

So you are not paying for your whole plot? Shouldn't you fess up! Didnt you read what pol said......

You asking me Newton??

There was nothing to fess up about he was told the truth it's a communal shed?

The land behind would be going to waste as it is not very wide or long, shaded by trees and the dumping ground for tones of old grave stones that where dumped there. That area has been covered and will be mulched as a community sitting area with fruit bushes and flowers interspersed for the enjoyment of other but at my expense. He was also told that and when I took it on the guy from the council stated that as half the area was concreted and taking away my potential growing space the area around that would not be counted in my charge. It's just that he failed to mention that to the guys who came yesterday. A prime example of people not communicating around this allotment.

[sandy]

I havn`t been on the forum for a while, so I`ve just found this thread. I have my allotment in Gateshead and just to get everything straight, my rent is going up from £33 last April to £140 this year. That is without the £11-50 water rates. For that, we get nothing. The fences are falling down, we havn`t had a skip for years and the place is covered in rubbish. Some of the allotments have waist high weeds and are dumping grounds for people who can`t be bothered to take their broken glass and gas bottles to the tip. We have no toilet, no shop, no roads and in the summer, have to battle through nettles and blackberries to get anywhere. The site was described by somebody passing on a bus as a third world shanty town. The letter we all received says `this year we are proposing that rents for allotments increase above inflation`, yes £33 to £140 is slightly above inflation.

[Tripmeup]

Wow. That is some increase... Have you discussed with other plot holders as to their feelings yet?
By the sound of it, they would need to be doing more around the place to justify such an increase..
.. although AP's thread elsewhere shows that they have all the power... It seems....

[susieq100]

Our rents are scheduled to increase by at least 5% a year - this year it has stayed the same as last year. We are going self-managed - we will have to pay the council the equivalent of £3.50 per plot, sort out our own public liability insurance, but it will enable us to keep rents at the same level or maybe even reduce them slightly if all goes well. We have water but that is metered so that we can keep an eye on consumption. Most people have water butts filled from their shed run off. The site is fenced and we have security keys for the gate (ones that can't be copied) but other than that there are no amenities. Plot holders do everything themselves.

[Olorin2001]

Allotments are covered by various legislation, and concerning rents this might be of interest.
Bolton Council Allotments Rent Increases, Allotment law

[Olorin2001]

In Southampton we pay £5.30 per rod (25sq metre) which includes water but nothing else. And it's increasing to £6.50 next year and then annual increases in line with inflation. Discount for OAP and other on benefits.