A local authority (Barnet Council) is using what appears to be a bona-fide research project in order to support their case for a very substantial (3 to 6-fold) increase in allotment rents. The council's paper in which this is proposed, includes the statement
"The charge will be £185 per annum per plot, (£355 non-residents) which can be compared against a minimum value of the produce from an allotment of £1564, the charges are in line and comparable with charges in other London boroughs."
No source is given for the beautifully precise, and remarkably high, figure of £1564. After some burrowing, it was found that it came from a document published by the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners (NSALG), which can be found at http://www.nsalg.org.uk/page.php?articl ... t+worth%3F
This is a rambling description of what is said to be a national survey of allotment gardeners, who were asked to keep a record of the crops harvested from their allotments over a year. It appears that they were looking for 100 gardeners to cover all of the country; there are something like 300,000 plots in the UK. It would seem that they were self-selected, rather than be chosen as a representative sample, and in the event, only 20 returned results.
Nothing in the document suggests that it was a properly designed or analysed survey, yet a council is prepared to use it to provide a justification for rent rises, which are much more likely to do with plugging holes in the council's coffers.
This is not the place to go into the ins and outs of allotment acts and fair rents, but we plotholders want to be able to oppose the council's proposals on as many fronts as possible and to attempt to discredit its arguments, of which the value of crops is one. What I am asking here is whether I am correct in my view that the survey and its conclusions are more than somewhat dodgy.
