Are allotment rents reasonable?

[Indigo23]

As someone else already said, I can only comment on our own plot. We pay £20 per year for a plot roughly 126.5ft by 16.5ft. Water is included in the price. I doubt we could get a month's gym membership for one of us for that price and the other benefits far outweigh any that the gym might have to offer, such as a feeling of community with the other plot holders. Coming home from work and putting my "gardening clothes" on is much more pleasurable than the idea of getting kitted up for the gym ever was.

[binley100]

There's nowt wrong with it Bins. Being on my Jack Jones it's more of a phaff to prepare & cook for one so it goes to family & friends. Nothing goes to waste.

So what do you eat?...... there's lots of ways to prepare your veg so it's convenient .

[Andypandi]

I don't have an allotment but from what I here they are fantastic value. Recently in the magazine someone wrote an article complaining that their council was trying to put up the rent from something like £30 to £60 a year. I appreciate people aren't made of money but this still seemed ok to me. There are some many positive things to gain from an allotment that the space must be worth every penny.

[Lolarentt]

I don't have an allotment but from what I here they are fantastic value. Recently in the magazine someone wrote an article complaining that their council was trying to put up the rent from something like £30 to £60 a year. I appreciate people aren't made of money but this still seemed ok to me. There are some many positive things to gain from an allotment that the space must be worth every penny.

We pay £20 p/a for a 10 pole plot. I believe it is increasing to £30 next April, this includes water supply, luckily one adjacent to my plot!


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[mrgrower]

I paid £65 for my two plots today I'm happy with that with that £5 is my site insurance too.

[Martin H]

The rent for my plot this season is £47. I'd like it to be less but I think it's still reasonable.

[3 allotments]

hi all newbie here, ive got three allotments 2 on the same site 150mtr each. £25.00 each yearly,going up to £30.00 next year. other one is 1/4 mile away, 300mtr @£38.60 year I think it is reasonable for 600 mtrs of gardening land .darren

[andy_j]

I have a 10m x 12m (5 rod ???) half plot and i pay £15 a year for that including water. I would happily pay double for the privilege. Infact, im going to suggest at our next AGM that rents are increased by a few quid a year so we can get a community shed, notice board etc etc.

[Floreal]

I pay £50/annum for 12.5 x 30 metres, a good size but more expensive than country average. For that we get to use the land, no water, no sheds allowed, no maintenance whatsoever.

[Euan]

We have a half plot for which we pay £17.25 per year rent and £10 per year membership fees. Our plot is c. 350-400 sq ft.

The facilities we have on site are excellent. There is a permanent clubhouse with heating, running water, toilet facilities, etc. Water facilities are provided across the site (which has 17 equal plots - some are used as half plots) and sheds are provided.

It's also only a 5 minute walk from our flat

[Dorothy rouse]

£41.00, a year, this includes water, a tap every 2 plots, and also a small concrete shed. It's a half plot.

[SarzWix]

I think people have to remember the origins and the purpose of allotments. They were supposed to compensate the people for the enclosure and claiming of common land by the rich, and therefore were assigned a 'peppercorn' rent, ie a symbolic rent. They were supposed to make the growing of veg and the raising of livestock affordable for the common man. They weren't supposed to be an addition to council revenues, but were supposed to be paid for from the rates (now council tax) of landowners who were reaping the benefits of land they had essentially stolen from the people.
For our site, this principle seems to have been lost; our site gets no benefit from the council, they don't maintain our boundaries, we have no mains water, they do nothing like path maintenance or weed-killing, we have no community building. And yet our rent is £36 per plot, on a site with 65 plots. What happens to all this money? We have no choice but to pay it, our site doesn't have statutory protection, and so is purely to prevent the council selling the land for development. Wrong, totally wrong. We're not the poorest in the world, but we struggle to find the money to pay £72 for our two plots plus seeds, tools, seed spuds etc. There's no point in comparing it to gym membership etc because they are way beyond our means.

So yes, a lot of rents are far too high, and put plots beyond the reach of those they were intended for.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Sarz, I'd bite their hand off at £36. £77 in Aberdeen.

[Olorin2001]

The rent is £6 per rod (rod being 25 square metres) or in old money - for that we get fences maintained and water.
As a point of reference when "peppercorn" rents were introduced a peppercorn was worth more than its weight in gold, but the modern interpretation is "nominal"

[alldigging]

If you treat your allotment as a hobby then cost is mostly irrelevant. Allotmenting isn't the most expensive hobby in the world (Although increasing rents may make it less so), but in terms of exercise and harvesting you get much more out than you put in.
Think of the cost of a gym membership and you're already well ahead in terms of value.
If you grow and harvest food too then you could weigh and price up the value of everything. That'd hopefully mean most people at least break even on what they spend on a normal year.

People who only turn up a few times a year, fail to harvest their crops which then rot in the bad weather, probably don't get anywhere near the same level of value from their plot fees.