Industry support for threatened allotment
Gardening luminaries, an allotment charity and local MPs have pledged support for plot holders of a West Yorkshire allotment society threatened with eviction.
Kirklees Council gave gardeners at Cemetery Road Allotments at Birkby, near Huddersfield, just six months to quit the site to make way for a new school sports pitch, scheduled to open in September. The council maintains the plots have temporary status, while outraged holders claim the provision is statutory, after they become allotments during the Second World War.
Ex-BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Toby Buckland has pledged support, along with MP Barry Sheerman. The National Allotment Society’s (NSALG) legal team is currently helping the Cemetery Road campaign group to establish the status of the allotment site.
“The site passed from Huddersfield Corporation to Kirklees Council in 1974 and our research will involve a laborious trawl through Huddersfield Corporation archives,” said a NSALG spokesperson. “There’s evidence the site has been in continuous use since at least 1949.”
Plot holder and campaigner Debby Fulgoni recently handed a 5,000-signature petition to the council. “We’re very cynical about the land being used as a sports pitch. We think the council is going for a change of use and the land will eventually be built on,” she is reported as saying. l Visit: facebook.com/cemeteryroadallotments.