June has been a busy month down at the plot nevertheless, whilst the cabbage patch is looking good, we do have a few other events to report besides alerting you to our meeting in July.
At the SAGs Conference there was an input from the Grow Observatory (www.growobservatory.org)which is looking for volunteers to engage in scientific observations. The aim is to create a better understanding about the conditions required for growing food locally. Maybe members might be interested in forming a GAF group of citizen scientists to join the project? Other links that might be of interest were to the work of the Soil Association in encouraging food growing in Edinburgh in conjunction with the network for Sustainable Food Cities. https://www.soilassociation.org/our-work-in-scotland/good-food-for-all/good-food-in-practice/
http://sustainablefoodcities.org
On June 8thwe met with Councillor Anna Richardson who was impressed by our report on Kids’ Friendly Allotments (link on Sites) and the feedback from the visit we hosted on May 17th (link on Events). She’s agreed to raise the issue of the need for play space on new sites and also that we should arrange a visit for Glasgow City councillors to tour some of the local sites and discuss issues with plotholders in August. A link to the note of our meeting is on the Events page.
Our next meeting in July starts with a look at funding and how various associations have been successful in getting the resources they need to make improvements to their sites. As we did after our last meeting, we’ll be collecting together everyone’s experience and advice and publishing it here. (PS If you are coming along to the meeting please bring any spare jam jars you can find).
** DEADLINE APPROACHING ** If you have had your plot for 18 months or less and you haven’t entered for the New Plotholder’s Awards yet take a look at what you need to do to get the chance of a helpful cash contribution to developing your new plot (see Awards page).
Success
The Scottish Government have completed a re-draft of the Statutory Guidelines for Local Authorities on Part 9 (Allotments) of the Community Empowerment Act. They received a lot more feedback from the first consultation than they expected. Those of you who responded to that earlier draft will be pleased to see they have taken on a number of our recommendations. They have announced that:
“A further public consultation on draft statutory guidance for local authorities relating to 10 sections of Part 9 of the Act is due to open on Monday 25th June.The public consultation will be open for a period of 8 weeks, closing on Monday 20thAugust.”
The link will be https://consult.gov.scot/