Search for allotments goes on

Malvern Town Council’s latest search for suitable land found no new plots after both the district council and Malvern Hills Conservators were contacted without success.

The town council has been trying for the past five years to find more land to boost its current 139 plots including, last year, an unsuccessful land auction bid.

In response to the town council’s more recent appeals, the conservators were unable to offer any of their land because it must always be for the enjoyment of all townspeople while the district council could offer no gaurantees.

Richard Chapman, town council clerk, will deliver both responses to members of the town council’s operations committee on Tuesday, June 9, showing the local authority is still without a solution to its burgeoning waiting list number.

In response, Mr Chapman is now publicly appealing for the use of new allotment land within the town.

“Let’s not set any limitations on what we are after,” he said. “We want people around the table.”

Currently, the town council has three sites in Madresfield Road, Knapp Way and Goodwood Road.

Mr Chapman said the popularity of allotments had out-stripped demand, a point agreed by John Fletcher, Madresfield Road Allotment Association secretary.

Mr Fletcher likened the Madresfield Road’s allotments to a “dead man’s shoes” scenario.

Fellow Madresfield allotment holder, Richard Peregrine said he thought the town council would have been unable to predict the upsurge in demand.

“If 100 people suddenly say they want an allotment how can you deal with that? Fashionable is the right word,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Madresfield Road allotment holders are currently waiting for the outcome of a possible wholesale move to part of the town council’s sports field site in Sling Lane.

The move is to make space for an expansion of the town cemetery.

An application for a change of use to one of two sports fields, to house the re-sited allotments is expected to be submitted soon.