Council digs in over allotment plea

7:45pm Monday 4th February 2008

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By The Page Turner »

CITY council leaders have refused to give in to the demands of allotment holders in Oxford who claim their rent should be waived for a year due to flooding.

The Osney, St Thomas and New Botley Allotment Association has asked the council for its first rent rebate in its 155-year history, after crops were destroyed by flooding in July and last month.

The association, which has 200 members, refused to pay the annual £1,097 rent bill in September, and secretary John Power asked city council leaders yesterday to waive the bill for a year.

The former Labour county councillor told the executive board: "In total, the floods set our association back about £1,100. We agreed to ask the council for a rent-free year 2007-08.

"This does seem to me to be a fair solution, which does not set dangerous precedents.

"A rent rebate for one year when countless damage was caused to crops, machinery, tools, sheds and greenhouses would not seem unfair.

"The floods affected us last summer and again this winter and to ask for £1,097 seems unreasonable. We have been tenants since 1857 and we have never defaulted."

Mr Power then called for the matter to be settled by an independent arbitrator.

Jim Campbell, executive member for better finances, said waiving the rent for a year would set a precedent.

He added that his own allotment at the Trap Grounds, in North Oxford, had also flooded and said: "I am deeply sympathetic but if the vegetables fail for one year for one reason or another that does not mean the council is responsible.

"John has done a huge amount to raise the profile of our allotments in recent years but that is no reason why a particular allotment site should get special treatment."

Mr Campbell said the council invested about £250,000 on allotments across Oxford two years ago, over a three-year period, and added that he hoped the Osney allotments issue did not need to be settled by arbitration.