Is Labour really declaring war on allotments? Let’s dig into the detail

National Allotment Society (NAS) legal adviser Tyler Harris was coming back from holiday on Sunday 3 August when the representative body was inundated with press enquiries.

It’s far from a normal occurrence. Harris’ role is mundane but important. When an allotment plot owner wants to sell a site, he and his colleagues make an assessment and work with the government to approve it.

Under the Allotments Act 1925, councils must get approval from the housing, local government and communities secretary, currently Angela Rayner, and statutory allotments can only be sold where this is absolutely necessary and where the legal threshold is met.

“A lot of my day to day, because I’m the legal adviser here at head office, is questions from our members about things like: can you look at this tenancy agreement? Cricket balls are flying over into our boundary. What can we do about it?” Harris tells Big Issue.

Labour’s latest failure was behind NAS’s packed inbox.

The Telegraph had run an article accusing Rayner of “declaring war” on allotments.

Since taking power last year, the government has approved the sale of eight allotment sites in Somerset, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, Nottinghamshire, West Sussex, Derbyshire and Kent.

That damning evidence left Labour in the mud and the mobs were grabbing their pitchforks in Westminster.

By Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn was sticking the shovel in – even writing for The Telegraph himself – accusing the government of a land grab, robbing the common man of his slice of rural life, greenfingered joy and a healthy diet once the tomatoes turn up and the spuds sprout.

By Thursday, it was Green peer Jenny Jones on Good Morning Britain with bowls of tomatoes and runner beans at her allotment above the words: ‘Lost the plot: Sell allotments to build more homes?’

“It seems there are no green spaces that are safe under this Labour government,” said Jones.

“This policy is another sign that Labour knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Cash-strapped councils need to be offered proper funding by central government, not pushed into selling off these vital community assets.”

The issue touched on accusations that Labour was “concreting over the countryside” following its plans to build on grey belt land – disused parts of the green belt – and tinker with the green belt.

It enlivened the ongoing YIMBY vs NIMBY debate, the issue of councils selling off public assets to make ends meet and, according to Corbyn, “government backing to developer threats on allotments.”

But, perhaps, the way the story evolved had more telling things to say about the vulnerability of a government being squeezed from all sides.

Big Issue dug into the details.

What is being sold off

The eight sites being sold off in the year since Labour came to power is nothing unusual. Nor are all the sales down to housing.

The 2024 total was higher than the sales granted in 2021 and 2023 when six sites were sold off but lower than in 2022 when 10 sites were sold and 2020 when 12 spaces were offloaded.

There are an estimated 330,000 allotment spaces across the UK – that’s based on estimates following a last nationwide count in 1996.

That means the amount of sites being sold off in the last year amounts to less than 0.01% of all plots. At this rate, it will take Rayner and the Labour government 40,000 years to build over them.

Any claims that the government has “declared war” are on shaky ground.

There is also a stringent process for granting approval to sell off sites.

National Allotment Society’s Harris told Big Issue that councils send him an application form when they want to sell a site.

In order to do so, the application has to fit statutory criteria to show that there is alternative land if it is being disposed of or that alternative land is not necessary, for example, due to a lack of demand.

There are also policy criteria to hit as well. That could mean considering waiting lists in the area or whether plots have been adequately advertised. Applications also have to show that local or national government plans would not impact the proposal.

Once the application is submitted to Harris, he works with regional representatives to visit the site and assess it before he produces a response to the council. The paperwork is then sent to the government’s planning casework unit for approval.

There is no evidence that the process has changed in the last year.

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Harris said: “We have looked, we’ve tried as hard as we can: we can’t find any smoking gun, any statements from her, any changes to policy, anything like that, anywhere in every source that we’ve looked.”

There were a variety of reasons for sites being granted approval last year, Harris said. They ranged from the extension of burial plots, to car parking, land being difficult to cultivate and low demand for allotments.

There are plans to build 78 new houses on a former allotment site in Storrington, West Sussex.

In a fact check blog disputing the media reports, a MHCLG spokesperson said: “Councils have been able to sell assets since 2016 and these rules have not changed. They should only do so where it is clearly necessary and offers value for money.

“We know how important allotments are for communities, and that is why strict criteria is in place to protect them, as well as school playing fields.”

Why the allotment story has sewn seeds of discontent for Labour

It’s the political land grab that will perhaps be most worrying for Labour.

Both the Greens and Jeremy Corbyn, who has set up a new political party with fellow Labour outcast Zara Sultana, seized on the chance to attack the government based on a story from the right-leaning mainstream press.

It’s a sign of the times for Starmer and co, who have been shifting the rhetoric to meet inroads from the right through Reform UK and are subject to attack from both sides.

The government has made big promises on tackling the housing crisis and reforming the planning system to deliver 1.5 million homes by the end of the decade. That has included the re-introduction of mandatory housebuilding targets for cash-strapped local authorities, many of whom are facing the prospect of selling off public assets to make ends meet.

There have also been promises from chancellor Rachel Reeves that “bats and newts” won’t block building projects.

Labour has leaned into the YIMBY side of the eternal YIMBY vs NIMBY debate.

Adam Peggs, of the think tank Common Wealth, said: “Public housing and public land are both in short supply. By and large this isn’t a consequence of councils prioritising green space over people’s housing needs but a long-running policy of privatisation in the UK. 

“If we choose to, we can reject the false binary of good housing and green space. For communities to thrive we need both.”

Gareth Fearn, Leverhulme early career fellow at the University of Manchester, told Big Issue that this context means he is not too surprised that a story about allotments has really taken hold across the political spectrum.

“The question of how land-use decisions are made does cut across political divides – in that most people want some say in these decisions even if they want different uses of the land,” said Fearn.

“Allotments are a rare thing in our society today, as a public good which brings together people of all ages in community, it’s probably one of the few places where Telegraph readers and Green-leaning younger people voluntarily spend time together so it doesn’t surprise me that a perceived threat to allotments would antagonise both of these groups.”

Fearn added that while YIMBY and NIMBY groups represent tiny minorities among voters, there is an outsized footprint in political debates with both groups using their class position to influence.

But the party’s approach to planning risks upsetting all kinds of voters if it can’t protect nature or public assets or build the homes the country desperately needs to address the housing crisis.

“The problem for Labour is that while they have leant into the YIMBY story about planning holding back Britain in proposing their reforms, they have also had to confront the reality that most people aren’t YIMBYs or NIMBYs – most want to see new housing and infrastructure whilst also protecting the natural environment and community assets,” said Fearn.

“What Labour have produced with their planning reforms is a platform which upsets more or less every group in civil society (including the YIMBYs) without really benefitting anyone except the volume housebuilders. It won’t make housing more affordable, it won’t be good for nature, what their reforms will likely do is just continually antagonise everyone from allotment holders to housing activists without delivering anything substantive for the public. 

“To actually achieve better land-use decisions requires more planning, not less, which addresses the inevitable conflicts over how land is used.”

But some good has come from the non-story and the conflict that followed. It demonstrated just how important the humble allotment is to Brits.

“It’s been really fantastic for us in terms of getting that emotive response for something that is effectively a non-story,” said Harris after the National Allotment Society put out a statement to “reassure plot holders” that sales weren’t on the rise.

“It’s nice to see that people are quick to jump to the defence of them, that people do see that they have a significant value to not just people’s well being and eating healthy, but also there’s a real social aspect to it and that kind of community building. 

“So that’s a huge positive, I think, for us.”

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