Could farm provide allotment space?

IN response to Amy Reast’s article on there being just under 300 people on a waiting list for just 67 allotment plots in Kesterman road allotments, why doesn’t Bristol City Council offer Catherine Withers a good price for her dwindling Yew Tree Farm now they have taken the adjoining land she used to rent next door for the expansion of the cemetery making running her farm unviable.

Give her a decent amount of capital so she could afford to relocate and then expand her farming operations so releasing Yew Tree Farm to be divided up into 300 allotments?

It would keep the land viable, help people grow healthy produce, keep them fit ,and help keep clean air flowing through that region of Bristol. People would get to know each other and even socialise.

That seems far better that letting land-grabbing greedy developers having it and that will surely happen when Catherine can no longer make her reduced acres at Yew Tree Farm viable.

In the eastern side of Germany near Dresden, which I visit quite often, most of the population live in rented flats, most of these built in the old DDR times before 1990. Most of the flats have a ‘garden allotment’ not too far away.

They all rent them from the local authority or allotment associations. All of them have a small building/ bungalow with a bedroom and some even have a WC, electricity, TV and obviously drains and mains water. Many families stay weekends on the allotment and chill out.

Isn’t it time that the developers in this country started building houses with gardens again. I don’t think that is about to happen too soon as developers build for maximum profit.

But times might change but only when people have had enough of authorities taking no notice of what they say. But time will tell!

Peter Astman Coopers Hill, Gloucestershire