Joe Porter: Allotments tie people to their neighbourhood, to the land beneath their feet, and to each other

Cllr Joe Porter is the district councillor for Brown Edge and Endon and the former Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Biodiversity at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council

We all know Angela Rayner has made a lot of mistakes. But it takes a pretty monumental one to get Jeremy Corbyn and the Conservatives to be both equally outraged.

Outrage over allowing councils to sell off allotments to raise funds to cover day-to-day spending might seem like making a mountain out of a molehill. In fact, it might on the surface appear to be a sensible thing to do. But to think this way is a classic Labour approach to green spaces – to see the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Allotments are not merely economic assets, they are vital parts of our social fabric. With over 330,000 allotment plots across the country, they have become vital and in-demand places of recreation and peace. Indeed, they are so popular that some waiting lists are as long as 15-20 years for an allotment.

It is our duty, as Conservatives, to defend our communities and the places they rely on to make a place feel like home. And if Corbyn wants to join for the ride, then together we will protect these vital, but sometimes overlooked, local treasures.

It will also do nothing to fix the monumental financial struggles councils are facing. It will raise minimum revenue and won’t tackle the deep, underlying problems facing councils. All this will do is strip local communities of a valuable amenity.

Allotments provide residents, often those on low incomes, with a space in which to grow food, and sometimes also flowers. It gives people a chance to get their hands dirty, and disconnect slightly from the supermarkets around them; they also foster a vital sense of self-reliance – even if only in a small way. There is a kind of practical independence to an allotment that Conservatives should champion: taking responsibility, working with one’s hands, and earning the literal fruits of one’s labour.

Allotments support individual responsibility, but also embody the conservative principle of stewardship. Allotment holders don’t simply use land, they care for it. They weed it, water it, compost it. They don’t and indeed can’t exploit the ground and move on when it’s spent. They cultivate it carefully over years. On my own allotment plot, not only do I grow my own produce, I’ve created a wildlife haven. If we allow these plots to be sold off for short-term budget relief, this sends a terrible message about our willingness to trust residents to nurture and tend to local spaces better than the government, local or national, can.

Then there is the intergenerational aspect. Allotments are one of the few places where grandparents, parents, and children often come together not just to consume, but to do. A child who plants a seed and watches it grow learns more than biology. Grandchildren learn patience, cause and effect, and the value of slow, steady effort. We so often talk about the need to transmit values from one generation to the next. Well, where better than at an allotment gate on a Saturday morning?

Allotments also support social cohesion and, as I have seen first hand in the Staffordshire Moorlands with our 21 allotment plots in Brown Edge, can help to combat the likes of elderly loneliness. In our increasingly fragmented communities, where neighbours may not even know each other’s names, the allotment serves as a rare and welcome point of contact for residents. This opportunity to meet should not be sniffed at.

James Cleverly noted, quite rightly, that Angela Rayner’s decision shows a “complete disdain for protecting valued green spaces”. Green spaces of all shapes, sizes, and purposes are vital community assets. Whether an allotment, a playing field, or a community orchard, creating opportunities for residents to get out into nature is essential for mental and physical well-being, for the fabric of the community, and the pride that residents have in it.

But they are so much more than already invaluable green spaces; they are low-pressure social spaces where you can give or receive not just seeds and surplus crops, but advice and wisdom. They help to build trust, civility, and neighbourliness. For example, we have an education plot for local school children in Brown Edge to help educate the next generation of green fingers. These are not nice-to-have virtues. They are the foundations of a healthy society, and their disappearance – alongside the spaces that nurture them – has consequences that we are only now beginning to acknowledge.

Allotments cultivate a sense of place, not merely a space. They tie people to their neighbourhood, to the land beneath their feet, and to each other. They give residents, especially young ones, a reason to stay. Contrary to Angela Rayner’s outlook, allotments are not just commodities. They are places that are maintained and treasured collectively by their stewards and by the community at large.

In the grand scheme of mistakes being made by this Labour government, allowing the sale of allotments may seem small, but its impact on individual communities could be severe. We Conservatives cannot on the one hand decry the loss of community and tradition, and on the other remain silent while the few remaining places that sustain them are sold off to the highest bidder. Selling them off might add a few zeroes to a council’s balance sheet today, but it subtracts far more from the moral and cultural wealth of a community in the years to come.