'Got the plot' - loss, rediscovery and restoration

Noon in the heart of Handsworth. An attentive assembly, many I know, listen to Adrian Stagg welcoming them to the first new allotments in Birmingham for thirty five years. Adrian and his colleague Mohamed from the City Council had stuck small numbered flags at the edge of each of the 79 plots on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. Shortlisted applicants strolled around picking a flag from the plot of their choice; taking it back to the community hut to sign a contract and pay rent to September. At last. Some began digging and planting at once.

Opening day of the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

The entrance to the Victoria Jubilee Allotments is to the east between plots 79 and 77, via the Parklands estate, entered off Hamstead Road via Victoriana Way, opposite a children's nursery and almost opposite Wellesbourne Road in Handsworth, Birmingham. On the west side of the plots the railway to Walsall runs through a cutting, to the south are the new playing fields - not ready yet - and to the north, Handsworth Park. The plots lie on a gentle north facing slope, overlooked on the east side by new houses. The gardeners' communal hut is close to the entrance between plots 25, 35 and 36.

Plan of plots on the VJA

From Nick Booth for the BBC: :-)

Losing the Plot - Midland Report BBC 2000 from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.
...and VJA slideshow including images of the old Victoria Jubilee Allotments and here are some of Birmingham photographer Luke Unsworth's images on YouTube taken in 2004 just before the site was cleared.

Luke Unsworth's images of the abandoned Victoria Jubilee in 2004

Originally the Victoria Jubilee Allotments were private - plots provided by the church to working men at the end of the 19th century, who joined together in a Provident Association or Friendly Society. Plots covered the whole 17 acre site. Clark Homes, then Westbury Homes, succeeded by Charles Church and finally Persimmon Homes persuaded the committee of the private plotholders to sell their plots and take the profits. Nick Booth's BBC film - Losing the Plot - documented this process in 2000, showing how allotment sites were being lost all over the country, as ageing plotholders, tempted by the cash offered by developers, sold up. Not all wanted this but they were overruled by a majority. The Victoria Jubilee Allotments Association being a Friendly Society, were prohibited by their constitution from selling plots, but the VJA Committee with the aid of Midland solicitors Challinors Lyon Clark changed themselves into a holding company which were able to sell the allotments and take the substantial profits that went with selling them for building.

The developer's initial masterplan involved covering the whole 17 acre site with unimaginative housing - a plan that met with prolonged, skillfully orchestrated and well argued opposition both locally and from green space defenders across Birmingham over nearly 15 years. Eventually the developers 'won', but resistance to the loss of the site helped Birmingham City Council negotiate a planning gain agreement (S106A) that saved two thirds of the site for greenspace, that would include the largest new allotment site in the UK since WW2, and the first new allotment site opened in Birmingham since 1975. The developer built private houses on just one third of the site. Under a planning application, finally approved in April 2004, two thirds of the site was allocated to playing fields and allotments paid for by the developer under a S106A - or planning gain agreement. The houses that were eventually built weren't ticky tacky, but handsome Victorian style houses laid out in a creative way, overlooking a restored Handsworth Park. A good few residents have taken up plots just outside their back door.

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THE ORIGINAL CASE FOR THE OLD VJA

In 1999 journalist Miles Blackley produced and directed a seven minute film for the BBC Community Programme Unit about our campaign to save the Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA). Miles' brief included playing up the role of the individual activist in local campaigns which is why the 'I' word gets such an airing, belying the swell of local community support for our campaign to prevent or reduce building over the VJA.

Victoria Jubilee Allotments: BBC Private Investigations 1999

By 2003 we'd assembled, with the help of fellow campaigners, especially John Richfield, Liz England and our lawyer Phil Shiner, a cogent written case to Birmingham City Council planners, proposing that the whole 17 acres (6.8 hectares) of the original Victoria Jubilee Allotments to allotments be saved for allotments. This included making what I still believe to be an irrefutable evidence-based argument that local demand for allotments was enough to ensure that all original 240 plots would, if the site were properly maintained, be taken up, This bundle also contained information about just how much private plotholders no longer living in the area would be likely to make if the site was sold to a private developer, given the numbers of plots some had accrued to themselves and their families some of whom had never been near a plot, while allowing the site to become run-down (what we termed 'malign neglect' or 'constructive non-maintenance' [NB: HM govt publication links seem slow or not working - 14/06/10]); refusing to let plots to those asking for them, including me, while at the same time arguing publicly that they had no option but to sell because there was "no demand for plots".

The case for the VJA made by The Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG) (appendices in a separate file or via links below)

Appendix 1: Single Regeneration Budget (SRB6) showing VJA unit 8

Appendix 2: Edwardian 'fringe belt' - hard & soft surfaces in the city

Appendix 3: 3 views of the VJA site

Appendix 4: HAIG’s alternative proposal

Appendix 5: Survey of allotment demand

Appendix 6: VJA shareholdings

Appendix 7: VJA wildlife survey

Support in the Unitary Development Plan 1993 for allotments. Para. 3.62

Slides of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

12 June - receipt for our plot on the VJA (photo: Richard Baddeley)

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30 January 1972. Saville Inquiry into the events on Bloody Sunday delivered this Monday afternoon

From cultivation to consumption

We’ve not run many events on the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments which only opened in June 2010. People have been concentrating on getting their plots to grow food, putting up sheds and polytunnels and, for those new to allotments, learning that growing your own food is not just about digging and sowing and harvesting - though that's hard work in itself - but about aligning the harvest with the needs of the kitchen, and knowing how to prepare, cook and serve vegetables you've grown yourself.
The trouble is that sometimes you're so pleased (if you’re like me) that your crop has arrived that you've forgotten to rotate your planting or sowing so that the right amount of food appears at the right time. It's all so much easier to go to the shops and buy what you need when you need it - or is it?
This is a pilot project in partnership with Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA) and Legacy WM. The aim is to raise awareness of recycling, composting, growing food and cooking them. It will work with young people from the Bangladeshi Youth Forum and older people from Birmingham Asian Resource Centre to demonstrate what can be done in people’s gardens and how food can be prepared. We will host two cooking events in the Victoria Jubilee Allotments and raise awareness of the benefits or eating organic food and encourage people to take similar initiatives in their own homes. It will also look at the negative impact of fast food on health, raise awareness of how food can be grown in gardens and the positive impact on health, increase recycling and composting and result in a reduction in land fill waste. It will also encourage young people to prepare and cook food.
The Victoria Jubilee Allotments are in Handsworth, Birmingham B20 2SZ. To find them you go to Handsworth and find Victoriana Way off the Hamstead Road (B4124) just before Handsworth Park if coming from the city centre. Go straight on down Victoriana Way about 100 yards through a new estate until it makes a T-junction with Nursery Drive. Turn left and you will see the double gates of the allotments ahead of you. There is car-parking inside the gates. From 5-7pm on Thursday 19 July 2012, Aftab Rahman will be there looking forward to seeing you joined by plot-holders from the allotments.

Abdul, Chani, Aftab and Jeevan ~ rehearsal for Thursday on the VJA

To run this short event we've had to be as conscientious as for something larger and more conspicuous. The £200 grant - a Small Environmental Bronze Award - was carefully checked bu Jo Burrill for Midland Heart with proof of Aftab's charitable status via LegacyWM, and must be accounted for in detail. On the allotments Jeevan must inform the City Council that we have carried out a risk assessment - what we did on Wednesday afternoon yesterday - that we have fire extinguishers and liability insurance or a formal disclaimer to be signed by everyone attending to ensure that the neither the Council nor the VJA carry liability for any injury to those participating in the event. We shrugged our shoulders, imagined contingencies, filled forms and accepted that doing this paperwork is a feature of the way we live now. We've checked that we have enough tables, plastic spoons, forks, plates and paper napkins. Jeevan our Hon Sec has lent me a key to the clubroom where there's a kitchen and chairs. Using the Handsworth Helping Hands transit van I have delivered our gazebo from home to use on the assumption there will be rain. I walked Abdul, Chani and Aftab round the allotments to tell more plot holders about the event and check that they might bring produce for cooking despite the enduring wet weather.
* * * * *

The Victoria Jubilee playing fields - still not ready 

Last night at Welford School there was a ward committee. The main item - a good 30 minutes' discussion - followed a presentation by Ghaz Hussain responsible for negotiating the original planning gain deal on the Victoria Jubilee Allotment, explaining why even though some elements of the S106A had been delivered - the allotments and funding for Handsworth Park and a percentage of social housing on the Victoriana estate - the promised sports pavilion, children's playground, and playing fields had not despite the original agreement between the city and the developer being made in 2004. Ghaz said a cross-departmental group was being assembled to pursue the full implementation of the original agreement with Persimmon Homes. Ghaz was appropriately dispassionate in his presentation. Cllr Mahmood Hussein, chairing, asked if I had anything to add. I retailed the dishonest way the original private allotment holders working on land in trust them as a Friendly Association had been so tempted by the property value of their land that they had gone into league with an Edgbaston Lawyer and turned themselves, probably in the process breaching the rules of their Friendly Association, into a holding company and stopped letting plots so they could justify their action by claiming there was no demand for allotments. BBC made a short film with me about this, able to dig out data about these dealings now that as a private company I could look up public domain data on holdings of different plotholders on the internet. It turned out that a minority had been taking over more and more plots for themselves and their families using any excuse for cancelling individual's leases. The largest beneficiaries of the land sale to a developer were people who had left Handsworth. I spoke for about five minutes. Cllr Waseem Zaffar said it was clear that both the city and the developer were at fault for the delay in delivering the playing fields. "Let's get a result by 1 September". The meeting, well attended did not get impatient with the time given to this. I can still imagine nothing much happen but I do think the matter has regained impetus now that Ghaz is 'in charge'. Also at the meeting was a colleague Stuart Morgan who has replaced Alan Orr as our constituency planning officer.

A little work after the ward meeting ~ 17 July

The good news announced at this ward meeting was a Community Chest grant for £4000 to Handsworth Helping Hands, which, since our meeting on 12 July is now an official unincorporated association. Those of us involved as a Voluntary Advisory Group (VAG) to Central Handsworth Practical Care Project (CHPCP) are now an elected commiteee with Chair, Secretary, Secretary and Constitution. We will need to answer for our use of this grant in detail and a darn good thing too,
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From my scam file - some cheeky names, like 'déconner-kidding, to talk crap, casmir-cashmire':

Dear Simon. Sylvain Deconee is my name. I was the Personal Attorney to late Mr.Casmir Baddeley a national of your country, who use to own an oil servicing company in Togo Republic and a vehicles dealer as well, he deposited Ten million two hundred thousand United States Dollars in one of the security finance firms here. Herein after shall be referred to as my client. Please, may I know if he relates to you or if you know something about him? You are free to reach me for more details. Regards, Sylvain Deconee

This con is so transparent, with the same text and different names substituted found more or less instantly on the web, I wonder if there's a hidden motive. What exactly is being harvested or tested? Intriguing. Exploring this could kick off an adventure, or a novel, the spammer a trainee, perhaps a teenager playing with a purloined smart phone on the other side of the world or just down the street or a shrewd operator transmitting a coded message.

A problem - the promised playing fields

The Victoria Jubilee site in 2000

One of our most active ward councillors, Waseem Zaffar, sent a circular last week about a meeting this evening about youth provision in Handsworth.

Dear Friends.
Many members of the community and in particular young people living in Lozells, Birchfield and Handsworth have raised concerns with me relating to youth provision in the local area. Many have also asked about provision that will be available from the new MyPlace building to be opened soon located near the Aston Sixways Island.
Harry Fowler, the Head of Birmingham Youth Services has kindly accepted my invitation to attend a seminar and explain how youth provision in the local area is developing as well as plans for provision from the MyPlace centre. The seminar will take place on Wednesday, 6th June 2012 (6pm-8pm) at the Lozells Methodist Community Centre, 113 Lozells Street, Lozells, B19 2AP.
There will be an opportunity for those attending the seminar to ask questions. If you are unable to attend, but would like to ask a question, please email me waseem@waseemzaffar.co.uk and I would be more than happy to ask the question and get a response back to you.
Yours truly, Waseem Zaffar
 Councillor for Lozells and East Handsworth Ward
Chair of O & S Committee for Social Cohesion & Community Safety
Birmingham City Council
Telephone: 01215513300
Mobile: 07790161889
Post: 16 Heathfield Road, Birmingham B19 1HB
Website: www.waseemzaffar.com

Dear Waseem
SPORTS SPACE ON THE VICTORIA JUBILEE SITE
It remains the case, despite a succession of explanations that go back over at least six years, that the playing fields and sport pavilion promised under the S106A concluded between the city and the developer in 2004 - N/01514/03/FUL - remain undelivered (see the plan associated with this application). The potential for youth provision of the Victoria Jubilee site (VJA) - for young people living in Lozells, Birchfield and Handsworth - cannot be over-estimated.
I understand that the developer - now Persimmon Homes - is forever seeking ways to evade the original conditons of the S106A concluded so long ago. I understand that objections by a vociferous minority of new homeowners on the Victoriana estate about the planned location of the children’s play area included in the S106A has give further excuses for delaying the larger project, as has the Council’s understandable unwillingness to be landed with the expense of a sub-standard set of playing fields and a cheaper version of the promised sports pavilion. The developer and the city are still arguing about these standards and the resulting deadlock is being paid for by all those young people who could be enjoying this space and by the community as a whole who face the collateral damage to social cohesion caused by lack of youth provision.
Forgive the asperity in my tone, Waseem. Forgive me repeating myself. For all the help you have been to the community of late this is the one issue over which I am inclined to feel you have not expressed sufficient anger or made sufficient enquiries into the relative spread of responsibilities. Now that we again have a Labour leadership in Birmingham, I hope you and fellow councillors will not only make your feelings known on this matter tonight, but pursue that matter even more conscientiously than you have so far.
My question for tonight is: When will the long-delayed provision for young people represented by the sports fields and playing areas promised under the Section 106 Agreement concluded in May 2004 between the City Council and the developer of homes on the Victoria Jubilee Allotment site between Holly Road and Hamstead Road in Handsworth be implemented?

Latest plan showing the planned playing fields

You say you are more than happy to get a response back to questions submitted, but it is you and the larger community who should be getting the response. Of course I am interested in what emerges. if anything, by way of answers, but I now (at last) have my allotment. I now have no young family nor need for more exercise than I already get from digging! This is your problem. It is only mine in so far as I deplore the unfairness of this delay, given the surrender of scarce green space* from which the developer has profited without giving their agreed return under the S106A. Just to remind you again of the terms of that agreement:

D. Planning Application No. N/01514/03/FUL – Victoria Jubilee Allotments ... approved under a Section 106 agreement to provide the following:
• Eighty new municipal allotments plus an index linked payment of £21,000 towards their maintenance.
• An index linked sum of £27,000 towards the maintenance of a play area and £25,000 in lieu of a second play area.
• An index linked sum of £15,000 towards the regeneration of neighbouringHandsworth Park.
• Two playing pitches and a cricket square plus a pavilion and car parking to the Council design.
• The inclusion of twenty four affordable homes.

2005 - site cleared. 

I phoned Waseem to say I'd sent this letter. He said he'd phone me back in 5 minutes. He did.
"This is ridiculous" he said "we will do something about this"
He wrote, and posted at almost the same time he was on the phone to me, to the Chair of Planning and various others and asked me to come along to the church tonight to raise the issue.
"I promise I won't get angry" I said "but I am"
Waseem's letter with my letter to him attached, to which I've added job titles:

From: Councillor Waseem Zaffar
Subject: Fwd: REMINDER: Seminar with the Head of Birmingham Youth Services on provision proposed for the MyPlace Youth Centre near Aston Sixways, Wednesday 6pm-8pm
Date: 6 June 2012 10:41:21 GMT+01:00
To: Richard.Goulborn@birmingham.gov.uk (Interim Head of Planning Management)
Cc: mike.sharpe@birmingham.gov.uk (Chairman - Planning Committee), Simon Baddeley, Waheed.Nazir@birmingham.gov.uk (Waheed Nazir, Director of Planning and Regeneration), Simon.Hodge@birmingham.gov.uk (Simon Hodge, Senior Planning Office) 

Dear Dick. Please see an email below from local community activist Simon Baddeley regarding an outstanding section 106 agreement for a development in my ward. How do we get about getting the developer to implement the agreement put in place some eight years ago? I am very concerned about this. Thanking you in anticipation.
Waseem Zaffar

2006 - playing fields to cover western section of the Victoria Jubilee site

*One of several films - this one by the BBC in 1999 - made about the campaign to prevent building on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA). Here's another - Losing the Plot - made by my friend Nick Booth in 2000, again focusing on the loss of urban green space to building.
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Later in the day Waseem copied me this letter to him from Ghaz Hussein, Development Planning & Regeneration Manager, BCC Ghaz Hussain Birmingham City Council :

Dear Councillor Zaffar, l refer to the attached e-mails from Dick and Simon Baddeley. Although I helped negotiate the original S106 with the then developer (Westbury Homes), I have not had any direct involvement in this project for a number of years and given the time lapsed had assumed that the developer had met the necessary obligations. So it is a  little surprising to read Simon Baddeley's e-mail. I 'll therefore pick this up with my Planning Manager upon his return from leave next week to see how best we unlock the outstanding contributions from Persimmon Homes who have taken over from Westbury. I'll contact you as soon as I have established the state of play. Hope all is well otherwise and many congratulations on securing your Cabinet Member position. Kind regards. Ghaz Hussain

I got this letter on getting home from the meeting at Lozells Methodist Church. I said nothing at the two hour meeting. I was learning something of how youth provision worked, listening to an hour and half of questions to Harry Fowler, the Head of Birmingham Youth Services, who'd briefly presented a description of the soon-to-be-opened MyPlace centre in Aston...

...one of several £5 million buildings initiated by the previous Labour Government in 2007. Harry, a student of mine over ten years ago, told us that one of the challenges attached to this impressive building was the £350K annual cost of running the building, amid a funding famine. Harry spoke of the  work of the people involved, of the need for carefully selected partners, of finding a charging scale that was equitable. The meeting was uncontentious, all very grown-up and realistic about the world, and the several children there aged around 13-14 were attentive throughout, ready with intelligent questions.

Harry Fowler speaks at Lozells Methodist Church

As I took all this in I began to grasp a aspect of the problem of the delay in implementing the S106 Agreement on the playing fields on the Victoria Jubilee site. The capital side of the promised playing fields is given the agreement, but not the revenue side, and the scale of these - separate from other causes, explanations and excuses - gives pause for thought, indeed helps explain the delay in getting the playing fields up and running. Who will manage them, maintain them, organised their use, keep them secure, take responsibility for relationships with different users, decide who to charge for their use and how much users should pay...I need to understand this and take into account when lobbying on their behalf.
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Two hours on Plot 14. Tidying weeds from paths; planting runner beans and a marrow - between showers, which look to continue next week, while my mother tells me the weather in the Highlands is lovely.

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The Greek Orthodox Church is strongly liturgical. Religious services are scripted, not improvised. Every ritual, prayer and genuflection is the tip of a theological iceberg. Faithless, in ways I don't understand, these ceremonies are embracing - especially now. I'm not alone. I recall the words:

...we may suggest that Orthodoxy in Greece may be better understood as a 'way of life' rather (than) as an attachment to metaphysical beliefs. Unlike what happens in other European countries, being a communist, atheist, or agnostic does not preclude someone from attending Church celebrations in Greece. This attitude of the Greeks towards Orthodoxy is graphically exemplified in the words of a Greek dentist as it is narrated by Ware*: "Personally I am an atheist; but because I am Greek, I am of course a member of the Orthodox Church"

In Ano Korakiana Nick and Sophia - του Νίκου και της Σοφίας Ζερβόπουλου - our neighbours up Democracy Street, whose son Antony's wedding to Georgia at St Nicholas Geronton in town we attended in April were at a service in one of the village churches, Ag.Triada, a small church nestling amid trees about a mile south of the village on a lane off the road to Kato Korakiana, to celebrate the Holy Spirit - του Αγίου Πνεύματος - celebrating Greek Pentecost - few days later than the Latin - involving the breaking of bread, specifically five loaves of bread...αρτοκλασία, artoklasia (artos - bread, klao - to break)...In the photo in red is the village papas Kostas with Dr Savannis standing tall on his right hand.

Πραγματοποιήθηκε χθες το πρωί Όρθρος και στη συνέχεια Λειτουργία στο εκκλησάκι της Αγίας Τριάδας, ανήμερα της εορτής του Αγίου Πνεύματος. Την φετινή εορτή οργάνωσε η οικογένεια του Νίκου και της Σοφίας Ζερβόπουλου και σχεδόν άπαντες οι συνεπώνυμοι Ζερβοπουλαίοι έδωσαν το παρόν. Ο κόσμος ήταν αρκετός και εκτός από το μικρό ναό, συγκεντρώθηκε στον περιαύλιο χώρο, αναζητώντας την προστασία της σκιάς των ελαιοδέντρων, αφού οι ψαλμωδίες των τεσσάρων ιερέων και των πολλών ψαλτάδων, διαχέονταν σε αρκετή ακτίνα. Το πρόγραμμα της Λειτουργίας περιελάμβανε και αρτοκλασία την οποία επιμελήθηκε ο Αντώνης Ζερβόπουλος…

Yesterday morning a Matins Liturgy took place and later a Service held in the chapel of Agia Triada (Holy Trinity) on the very day of celebrating the feast of of the Holy Spirit. This year's celebrations were organised by the the family of Niko and Sophia Zervopoulos and almost all, bearing the name Zervopoulos, attended; some congregating on the forecourt of the tiny chapel, seeking the shade of the olive trees, since the chanting of the four priests and many cantors could be heard afar. The service also included the ritual of breaking bread led by Anthony Zervopoulos ...(Thanks to Aleko for help with translation).

 2 καὶ ἐγένετο ἄφνω ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἦχος ὥσπερ φερομένης πνοῆς βιαίας, καὶ ἐπλήρωσεν ὅλον τὸν οἶκον οὗ ἦσαν καθήμενοι· 3 καὶ ὤφθησαν αὐτοῖς διαμεριζόμεναι γλῶσσαι ὡσεὶ πυρός,

*Ware, K., The Church: A Time for Transition, pp. 208-227, in Clogg, R. (ed.), Greece in the 1980s (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1983)
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More and more this continental crisis, potentially global according to our public leaders, is about whether Europe should become a federation, its members pooling their sovereignty under an agreed rule of law (described by one cynic as a number of wolves and sheep getting together to agree what they should have for supper), with fiscal controls that apply across the Eurozone. The interesting paradox; that subsidiarity - delegation of power to the lowest place where the capacity to exercise it exists - may work better inside a supra-national federation, especially now that the smallest hamlet can be in touch with the world and we learning more every day about the working of villages - learning that can be shared without intermediaries between villages in Australia, Borneo, Korea, Greece, Iceland, Brazil, China, Egypt, Iran or Canada. These places are emerging in many places and they are in touch with one another advancing their understanding of the complex fractious challenges of self-government. A village is not just a clearly bordered cluster amid countryside; it can also be a reverse cancer within a dysfunctional autodependent city. See my Los Angeles friend Richard Risemberg's posting on Denver's good, bad and ugly. The process of making Europe into a workable federation may well be given a shove at the next European summit on 28-29 June. Angela Merkel is 'playing down' the significance of this meeting, anticipating that if any such initiative is to float its launch will last for ever. 

Small island in which I rejoice

VJA Committee meeting - first anniversary

Jeevan, Imran and I on the Victoria Jubilee

The Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA) Association met in its clubroom on Saturday morning 11 June 2011; Phil Rose in the Chair. I said I wasn't a committee member but was welcomed (my commitment now is to stop talking, which I do well, and prove to myself I can grow food). People went round saying 'hullo' - Scylla - our secretary - Lorraine, Kashmeer (spelling?), Jeevan, Peter - our treasurer - Judy, Imran, Anna, Sonia, Carol, Robin, and another Lorraine - "Lorraine L". It was a chance for me to get an impression, over and above the progress I could see by strolling round the site, of progress behind the scenes [Photo with permission]

There were hiccups with the drains and the loo. The city council to whom we were all contracted was looking into that. Every plot was taken. There were people waiting. A grant had been won from Awards for All to construct a sensory garden. There was of course a shop staffed by volunteers on rota, with a supply of compost and sharps sand and access to further products on request, a selection of useful tools for gardeners to borrow including a rotavator, a strimmer, a trolley and hand truck. Finances were in good order. What I noted and enjoyed most was the slightly messy and relaxed banter of a reliable working committee, capable of making and following through decisions, allowing diversions but sticking to the agreed agenda while having a laugh now and then; not dominated by any one personality.
As I expected, the matter arose of plotholders who, for one reason or another, were allowing weeds to mature. I was inclined to keep my head down, though I have cut back on most seed heads and am slowly digging my way north, but one plot-holder, a friend - his largely fallow plot near ours  - was swift to remark the subjectivity of the term 'weed', knowing names - Horse’s tail, Oxeye daisy, Japanese knotweed - there's a devil - Bindweed, Yellow toadflax, Ragwort - the famous 'stinking willie' - Creeping Buttercup. Common Chickweed, Ground-elder, broadleaf dock, cushy-cows, kettle dock, smair dock and the prolific thistle family to name just a few - but pointing out that for some Fat-hen - Chenopodium album - an annual covering much of the site last summer and no doubt returning soon - is a cash crop eaten all over the world, expanding, when requested to cut his weeds down even if he didn't want to, or couldn't, dig his soil right now, on the point that some weeds if cut back grew even worse and, if dug up, made way for ones that are even less welcome.
"Will you just cut back the stuff on your plot, please, so the seeds don't fly all over the hard work of people who've been breaking their backs to draw a crop from their garden?"
The chair moved on over muttered interjections. There was an agenda item about a website for the VJA.

I and a committee member, Anna, pointed out that until such a time as one of us volunteered to design and maintain a website we could provide information about ourselves and communicate via an existing blog like mine, which could be searched for references under 'VJA' or 'Victoria Jubilee Allotments', or a set of pictures on a photo hosting site like flickr, with the option of adding links between pictures with texts containing further links to that blog or other relevant sites. At a pinch I suggested anyone could just search under 'Victoria Jubilee Allotments'. The name has a rich web presence because the internet had been so available while we were campaigning. I promised I'd post some links on Democracy Street that would point people to things that had gone on before the new VJA opened on 12 June last year - on the 11 June 2011 entry, the new VJA's first anniversary.
While I and others were campaigning to prevent a private housebuilder winning planning approval for building over the whole site, including our present allotments and the area now reserved for playing fields, we called ourselves, on the basis that information is power, the Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG) and produced a detailed argument for not building on any of the site, that revolved round the fact that there was enough demand for allotments in the area to take up all the plots on the private allotment site that had existed there since the 19th century. The Case for the Victoria Jubilee Allotments - report and appendices on Google.docs.
Around the time we were formulating our case and holding public meetings and circulating leaflets two films were made by the BBc that features the VJA.
1. Victoria Jubilee Allotments: BBC Private Investigations
2. Losing the Plot - Midland Report BBC 2000

Bobby, Scylla (Hon.Sec) and Joey - VJA 11 June 2011

And this was the case I made in 2003 to Birmingham City Planning Committee which 'compacted'- we were allowed 3 minutes - our case against the developer's application and delayed approval until a more generous planning gain agreement was concluded with the applicant and won us the site we now enjoy:

Comments by HAIG (Handsworth Allotments Information Group) on application N/01514/03/FUL – Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA)  - at Birmingham City Council Development Control meeting on 4 December 2003

I’m going to explain why the decision recommended to you is in clear breach of your duty as a Council to assess demand for allotments – not just on the VJA but across the city. I will, in your interests, take you through the key points

1. Para 3.62 of the Unitary Development Plan said “Where it can be demonstrated that the demand for allotments has fallen, consideration will be given to alternative uses for surplus allotments.”

The important words are demonstrate and demand – which refers to evidence of expressed and potential demand for allotments. Furthermore it says there must be “exceptional circumstances” to justify permitting “other forms of development”. Have exceptional circumstances been demonstrated?

2. This application, and your officer’s arguments for it, do not pass the first hurdle set by your own UDP – namely the demonstration of fallen demand.

i. On p.13 of his report your officer says waiting  lists in the vicinity of VJA equals 124 plots

ii. And on p.14, acknowledging the City holds no centralised waiting list information, he relies on a population based analysis of demand to suggest an over-provision of 279 plots.

3. Before accepting this “paper exercise” as a legitimate demonstration of fallen demand as required by the UDP, we must understand that by relying on points 2i) and 2ii) for this purpose, the officer is in clear breach of a duty to assess the need of the local community for allotment space. In effect BCC is relying on its own failure to assess demand to show there is no demand. 

4. The duty to assess needs for allotments is very clear

• Paras 1,2,3,5,10 in PPG17(see PPG17: Planning for Open Space, Sport and Recreation)

5. Where then is BCC’s assessment of the need/demand for

• allotments on VJA?

• allotments within 1 mile (or whatever is an appropriate minimum travel distance) of the VJA?

• allotments within the district i.e. Handsworth or North B’ham?

• allotments within the city?

6. No such assessment has been made by BCC. Given this clear breach of duty, involving a significant loss of allotment space, BCC cannot approve a project, or defer it merely to pursue a legal agreement with the applicant. It must either

• defer and meet the duty to assess, or

• reject (we note, by the way, that Westbury have not demonstrated  fallen demand through an independent assessment (see 3.2. Assessing needs etc in PPG17 companion guide)  )

7. In these circumstances the “paper exercises” of 2i) and 2ii) are insufficient. It doesn’t matter whether appropriate minimum provision is 7 plots per 1000, because BCC cannot rely on a paper exercise in the absence of “comprehensive” (3.1. Assessing needs etc in PPG17 companion guide) and “robust assessments” of the “existing and future needs” of the population for open space (PPG17 para 1). If there is an assessment meeting PPG17 duties, why does your officer’s report not refer to it?

9. So that makes 3 breaches in the recommendation before you – two of omission, one of commission. These entail

a) failure to assess need

b) failure to take into account the material consideration that need for allotments has not been properly assessed, and

c) taking account of an immaterial consideration, i.e. inadequate “paper” exercises claiming to prove a fall in demand which those of us who live in Handsworth have gone out on the streets to prove is not the case.

References: 

• Planning Officer’s report to BCC Development Control Committee on N/01514/03/FUL – 4 Dec 2003

• Planning Policy Guidance 17: Planning for Open Space, Sport and Recreation: ODPM Aug 2002

• Assessing needs and opportunities - companion guide Planning Policy Guidance 17: ODPM

This was the opening day of the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments - Saturday, 12 June 2010.

My son Richard took photos of people signing up for their plots on that happy day and I shall try to collate and publish these, while this blog features day to day activities on the VJA from a more personal point of view. If any gardener would like more information or any document, map or image relating to the VJA just ask me when you see me, or email me at s.j.baddeley@bham.ac.uk

January 2007: still waiting for plots

And at last we've got the plot

12 June 2010: Delith, Jeevan and Rachel wait to register for plots

Got the plot

This afternoon I borrowed the associations trolley, perfect for getting some heavy slabs down to the bottom of our plot as foundations for the shed. I've bought a hand earth tamper to help me flatten down the foundations. Lin who did all the plaka in the garden at 208 Democracy Street will come down on Sunday to start laying the slabs flat. My knees and hips are aching...

...and something, probably a pigeon, has eaten the better part of the broccoli we planted yesterday.

And there's Dr Vanley Burke at work on his plot across the way from Plot 14 where we are struggling - gamefully. "Can I take a photo, Vanley?" He nodded assent.

Afterword - 13/6/11: Contemplating the matter of weeds. I was having a chat on Monday morning with Delith who has a plot near ours and Rachel's. We've all got a variety of what constitute weeds on our plots.
"They look beautiful"
"Oh I know. In another setting make a meadow, full of the insect-filled diversity that's been so harmed by mono-cropping. I find it ironic that I'm striving to get rid of these on my allotment."
"There's a theory - no-dig gardening - that says you'll never get rid of weeds" said Delith
I mentioned an episode of Old Country  my stepfather broadcast on Channel 4 in the 1980s. Wandering along a downland slope he compared a ley grass monoculture - cocksfoot, ryegrass, white clover, with (at 09.58 on on a 14" clip) an enclosed piece of old common land full of flowers - thirty and more varieties of herbage.and the insects that live on them.

Victoria Jubilee Allotments, Handsworth

Thanks so much, Adrian, for The Stirrer’s continued concern about the long delay in implementing the terms of Birmingham’s Planning Gain Agreement with developer Charles Church to lay out new allotments and playing fields on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA) site next to Handsworth Park. Daily news about recession adds to the urgency of this matter. As in the 1980s, despite many improvements in recent years in Handsworth and Lozells, recession’s impact is likely to be amplified here. We're at risk. A green vision - sustainability, shorter food miles, local farming – drove the long campaign for the VJA, but environmentalism was always part of a larger response to wider economic trends. These are now impacting – remorselessly - on the real economy of the UK, on the population of Birmingham, especially on the people of Handsworth and Lozells. We are not helpless in the face of such ominous developments. The wise mantra – small is beautiful - can be realised in this place as a Brummy example to others, as one of millions of antidotes to climate change. There’s a positive story here about local people contributing to the transition from a consuming economy to a thriftier more fruitful one. This exciting story began over ten years ago. It’s about about elected councillors, volunteers, local managers and community leaders, helping - with a private developer - to bring to Birmingham the largest new inner-city food growing site in Britain since World War 2 - the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments. ‘Victoria Jubilee’ – a name associated locally with abandonment and decay - now resonates hope in difficult times. Our green spaces can again be a vital part of our common wealth. This particular one awaits the spade. To realise a long projected and detailed plan to bring playing fields and allotments to the Victoria Jubilee site, we need the same resourcefulness that drove local leaders, amid the seismic changes of the industrial revolution, to realise the wonderful idea of Handsworth Park – declared by Lord Dartmouth as “open to the people for ever” on 30 March 1898. That same resourcefulness is here now. Over twenty years, many people, politicians, professionals and lay volunteers - some now firm friends - worked to create a new Handsworth Park, a reinvented urban green space of value to the whole city; of inestimable value to those who live near it and love it. Let’s strive to make a new Victoria Jubilee Allotments for Handsworth and for Birmingham. Let’s get on with laying out their accompanying playing fields. Let’s avoid further delay in making them ‘open to the people for ever’. We can do this. Best wishes, Simon

Simon Baddeley Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG) 34 Beaudesert Road, Handsworth B20 3TG

[Photos: Thanks to the talent of Luke Unsworth]

* * * [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecasts protracted economic slowdown] * * * Back to the future 16/11/08 ~ I was looped into this letter from my step-father's biographer, Paul Peacock, sent to Colin Sykes, environmental correspondent at BBC Northwest who mentioned he'd be interested in following the story, Mark Hampshire is from the Allotment Channel and Gerry Sammon, an editor with the Guardian Group Local Newspapers who's keen to follow this (P describes me as working on the interface between policy at local government level and implementation by executives, and very interested in allotments.) Hello. Dave Roscoe, City Centre Regeneration Manager, Manchester City Council, kindly pointed me in your direction. I write on environmental themes and in particular the provision of food made at home. You can check me out on the websites under my sig below. In my work I have come across a lot of research that points to the absolute need for cities to begin to plan to grow their own food and I approached Dave Roscoe for some help in thinking creatively to make this happen beyond the boundaries imposed by the 'flat cap' image of allotments. One of the problems of allotments, apart from the fact that there are not enough of them, is that they do not take account of the other uses of the land nor its value as a financial resource, however there are some fundamental reasons why I believe we urgently need to provide growing spaces in the inner city and city centre. There is a perceived need for them. People want to grow some of their own food. Waiting lists for allotments are at an all time high. If everyone on current waiting lists got a plot today there would be more than at the height of the Second World War. Academics around the world are beginning to use the words 'coming famine' when referring to western modern, post-industrial, cities. If we are able to think creatively to provide growing spaces that could be tended , say, at lunchtime for city centre workers, or small but definite spaces for city centre residents, we would improve their lives no end. An example of the kind of thing I am thinking of is the Edible Classroom. I have been making films for the Allotment Channel and quite naturally have come into contact with many suppliers of materials for gardeners. Together we have come up with the idea of the Edible Classroom, which is a polytunnel in which is all that is needed to teach children to grow their own food. We will be providing a set of curriculum materials and DVD's based on the Allotment Channel, specially filmed with children undertaking simple growing tasks. Now this is a commercial venture - the suppliers need payment for their materials etc., but an ideal situation would include a wide variety of projects, each designed to encourage inner city and city centre people to grow at least some of their own food. I would value the opportunity to talk about what might be done and to think creatively about the provision of growing spaces and would certainly make myself available to come and see you at your convenience.

Best Wishes, Paul Peacock 0161 655 4428 www.paulpeacock.net www.homefarmer.co.uk www.allotmenttv.co.uk