Author: Scott Ramsay

We are asking you to complete this survey because the City Council is going to have to establish a central waiting list for allotments covering all your sites. We think that we need to do everything we can to make sure that sites end up with a system that fits the needs of their associations rather than something that adds extra work and aggravation to the job of managing the enrolment of new members and the allocation of plots.

The survey will help GAF:

• gain a reasonably accurate view of how waiting lists are managed by GCC site
  associations
• identify key issues which need to be considered if a central waiting list is to be
  established

Background

According to the Community Empowerment Act 2015 (Section 9 123), if associations want to
keep their own waiting lists they have to apply in writing to Glasgow City Council (GCC) to have that
function delegated to them.

Thereafter, GCC has to satisfy itself that the association is fit to carry out this task and then make a written agreement with the association that it will be managing its own waiting list in future.

However, even if GCC establishes waiting list agreements with all its individual allotment associations, this will not override the GCC’s duty to keep a central waiting list. The Act establishes local authorities’ central waiting lists as the means of ensuring that any resident who wants an allotment waits for no more than 5 years to be offered one. The centrally kept waiting list is the means whereby the authority’s duty to offer an allotment to any resident who wants one is to be fulfilled.

These legal prescriptions about waiting lists contained in the Act raise a number of ‘interesting’ issues about how the matter of site-based and centrally held waiting lists is to be managed because it requires the effective sharing of both data and responsibility on the part of all concerned.

The survey

Please send your answers to the following questions to judy@atlas.co.uk

1. Data
   What contact data do you collect from people who want to sign up?,
   How do you collect it?
   How do you store it?
   Do you ask people other questions – e.g. size of plot, previous experience etc?
   Do you charge people for going on the list?
2. Use of the list
   Do you have any other communications with individuals other than letting them know
   when a plot is available – e.g Do you inform people of their position on list? Send out
   information – e.g about open days etc.
3. Review of list
   How often do you review the list?

Supposing there was a central waiting list kept through a common standard
application form:

What benefits do you see?
What would worry you about being part of such a system?
What responsibilities would you like to retain?
Useful data – just rough numbers giving average per year don’t spend time on
accurate information at this stage
Time involved – how much time per year do you reckon you spend on waiting list issues?
How many people (individual, joint, groups) apply to go on your list in a year on average?
How many inquiries about position on the list do you receive?
How many people are removed from the list when you review it?

Some of you have written into us enquiring about what is happening about the consultation process we outlined earlier in the year.

Whilst there has been no official communication with us, we have reason to believe that the original timeline and sequence of events will be altered.

As far as we know, the Food Growing Team intend to start with individual negotiations with each Allotment Association about the terms of delegation laid down by the Community Empowerment Act Section 123.

This section requires that each allotment association applies in writing to manage:

a) their waiting list
b) notice of termination and renewal of tenancy
c) spending of monies given for training or promotional purposes.

GCC’s Officers are then required to satisfy themselves that the association is capable of carrying out these functions and both parties must then sign an agreement to that effect which is to be regularly reviewed. They are currently discussing this matter with their legal team.

The implication at the moment seems to be that only once this negotiation has been completed for all the local authority’s allotment sites will the process of consultation on the new allotment regulations be carried out.

At present, GAF does not have any information about the revised timelines for all of this.

Meeting to discuss