 Good morning and welcome to the seventh meeting in 2022 of the local government housing and planning committee. I would ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take item 3 and 4 in private. Are we all agreed? We're all agreed. The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on the impact of the Community Empowerment Act on allotments and community food growing. This is the first of three evidence sessions that the committee is holding during its current inquiry. We will be discussing this topic today with a panel of witnesses representing allotment and food growing organisations. I welcome Lou Evans from the Community Growing Forum Scotland, Jenny Reeves, who is the chair of the Glasgow Allotments Forum, Stuart Mackenzie, who is the president of the Federation of Edinburgh and District Allotments and Gardens Association, and joining us online is Richard Crawford, who is the vice president of the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society. It would be helpful if members could direct their questions to a specific witness where possible, although I will be happy to bring in others who wish to contribute. If other witnesses do wish to comment, please indicate your desire to do so to me or to the clerk, and I will bring you in at an appropriate point. I would be grateful, Richard, if you could indicate when you wish to come in by typing anar in the chat function in the blue jeans. I will now open up the session to questions from members, and I would like to begin by asking a few questions. This is around the big picture of allotments. I am keen to hear your views on the broader positive impacts of allotments, particularly the social, environmental and food security benefits that allotments bring. In addition to that, if you have any sense of how these benefits are being measured, and if you think that allotments have an impact in other areas of public policy in Scotland, so there is quite a bit there. Maybe I will start with Stuart, and then for this one we will go to everybody. Yes, I am very impressed with my allotment. I could not have done without it during Covid, and I think that everybody on the allotment site would agree with me. It is a really important place to get sanctuary, as well as the food growing aspect. From a health point of view, physical and mental health are important and delivered quite nicely by having an allotment. Repeat the next bit, please. Do you have a sense of how that is being measured in any way? I do not think that it is actually being measured. I was quite pleased to read a report from a federation in Brighton and Hove, where they had put pound notes against an allotment. That came to £166 every year by providing an allotment, and that was in things like carbon capture, health benefits, actually packaging that you did not need to put around a cabbage before you ate it, things like that. Therefore, you have less money to spend on waste disposal, this sort of thing. There is a value now being associated with an allotment. From my point of view, I grow quite a lot of food, but I know fine that I can get it cheaper in the supermarkets. Even now, I grow the stuff that I want to eat, the stuff that is tasty and that is not processed, if you like, by supermarkets. I grow tomatoes that have skins that you do not have to throw at the wall. It is just better food, and I think that more and more people are realising that, especially coming out of Covid, which is why waiting lists are soaring. I did look out that information that we talked about yesterday. It was called Peter's plot, and it was a guy who, for six years, recorded exactly what he grew. Everything. He weighed everything. We averaged it. In fact, this was brought out when the Edinburgh Council wanted to triple our rents, and we used this to prove that we were not getting that much value out of our allotments, and therefore a rent increase of that magnitude was actually probably illegal. But I will pass this to you later on. It basically says that we grow a total value of about £500 every year, potentially. Peter was a very good gardener. He produced a heck of a lot of stuff. A lot of people, of course, used their plots for more sitting, enjoying listening to the birds, but that's the potential. Of course, sitting and listening to the birds has that value around health benefits, mental wellbeing and all that. Lou, do you have any experience? I'm lucky to have an allotment, and I would echo everything that Stewart has said. I think the only different piece when we talk about allotments is that I have young children. They no longer want to come to the allotment with me, which is perfectly normal. But when they were very young, they came to the allotment. It was a safe place for them to play, and they were exposed to. They know where food comes from. So I would argue that anyone who doesn't have access to allotment or an allotment is just too much for them to take on, I think the potential when we talk about the wider scope for beyond just grow your own in an allotment setting is we really need to address our food issues and our lack of disconnect from food. I think we would all argue, whilst we advocate for quite different models, that we would all argue that we need a huge amount more of this, and it needs to be highly visible. I would say that's maybe possibly, and I'm really prepared to be disagreed with, but my allotment is tucked away, and it is a place of sanctuary, and it is a place of wildlife, and there's gates, and it's secure, and fantastic during Covid, great for family time. I would argue that it's not highly visible model, alternative model to our food system. We need a whole load of different models. We really need to bring in back where food growing comes from right back into people's faces. It's not evident enough, and allotments, whilst one form of being able to do that, and a brilliant model is not the only model. We need a whole load of diverse models, and they need to be highly visible in a way that many allotment sites simply aren't. Thanks for that, and Jenny. Yeah, I'd like to pick up on what Lou has been saying. I think the things we haven't talked about in some ways are the social benefits. I'm from Springburn Allotments, which is a private site, but nevertheless I think some of the evidence there is interesting. We were very run down and in an awful state, and we've been reinvigorating the place, so we've had quite a lot of plots to offer. Our demographic now is preponderantly with new Scots, and I think the reason that is happening in Springburn, which is an area of high multiple deprivation, is because the new Scots are coming from food cultures that are actually connected with growing. Springburn is really fun because you can see so many different ways of growing things, and also because it's a place where those groups meet. We're now beginning to get representatives on our committee who reflect the diversity of that population. What's sad is, Springburn used to have four large allotment sites, and if I use the word, I'm sure it's not probably correct, native Scots, if you like, the white working class Scots in Springburn are not applying for plots, and I think it is picking up with Lou because they've lost their connection with what was a Scottish tradition of food growing, et cetera, and I think also to pick up from Lou on the one about publics being hidden away behind various fences. I think one thing you need to take into account on allotments now is they don't have to be separate from community groups. Many allotments, our allotment for instance, has the North Glasgow community food initiative on there, so you can actually have a group that runs a group community plot in an allotment. One of the things we've argued, particularly, we've been working at Gaff with Public Health Scotland looking at the place standard, and one of the things that was interesting and emerged from doing that was a group. We took them round a park to look at it and think about growing in the park, and we had people who were interested in market gardens, urban farms, community gardens and allotments, and in the end session, when we got them all together and we were really asking them to evaluate the experience of using the place standard, what they all began to say was it's alerted us to that as a public space and we don't grow in public, and we should be growing in public. We should have public places where people can come and see it happening, where they can come and talk to people who are growing, where they can see different models. I'll shut up there because I'll probably go on about land use and things. I think that for the Scottish Government, if it's pursuing the ends of the good food nation, it needs to bear in mind it's not enough to just teach school kids or further education. We need to get the whole adult population involved in this, and land for growing and growing things needs to become a public activity, a valued activity, and something that everybody can get a spoon into it. We will work on our end to say to our allotments associations, please think about how you connect with your local community and how you could connect more with it, but they are traditionally in funny little bits of land that nobody knows and surrounded by a high fence, and it won't do for the future, it really won't. Indeed, thank you very much for your response, and I was saying to it, so yesterday we visited Stuart's allotment and I was telling him that when I was a child I came across that allotment in Inverleith Park. Remember it being this magical discovery experience, and you're right, the allotments are tucked away. We did visit one yesterday and other ones as well, and I think that certainly Inverleith allotments seems to be more visible now, and certainly 180 people growing food there. We did visit other ones that are visible and have that community plot from the new Scots, as you spoke of, which was really incredible to see it coming to life. I'm going to bring in Richard now. Richard, it's the same question, so just in general, the kind of social, environmental, food security benefits of allotments and community growing, and if you have a sense of any of the work you've been doing, if these benefits are being measured or assessed in any way? Well, most of the points, obviously, have been covered by Lou Stuart and Jenny. Education is something that's really big for us at the moment, and my local allotment, we're engaged with the school that's near to us, along with the nursery. The nursery's actually got a plot on our allotments and they're working hard to grow food there, but the work that we're doing with the school kind of reawakened something that was in me, because I used to garden with my grandfather when I was about two, got pictures of me pushing wheelbarrows around. For me, that was quite an exciting time watching things grow, so this engagement that we have with the school now is showing that all over again for me. The school kids are really excited and involved. The issue that we might have in years to come is that even a reasonable proportion of those kids decide that growing food is for them, we need even more allotments moving forward, so it kind of has a knock-on effect later on, which we need to consider. Apart from that, everything that Lou Stuart and Jenny have said, I agree with. Okay, thank you. Let's move on, because we've got quite a lot to get through, and I'm sure that we'll be asking a question where you can bring in all those bits and pieces. I just want to get to this piece about what we're here today to talk about, which is part nine of the Community Empowerment Act, and a key aim of part nine was to help address the demand for allotments that Richard just touched on there. I'm interested to hear if you think that it has that legislation made a difference in terms of addressing that demand, so if anybody wants to pick that up, okay, Stuart, and then Jenny. Fantastic. No is the answer. I don't think it's made any difference at all, unfortunately. I was actually in Scottish Parliament when it was passed, and it was just a wonderful time, and I really think that at last someone or some organisation had decided that allotments were worth having after all. What's happened in Edinburgh is that our waiting list has just rocketed. It shut up before Covid, and I think Covid tended to just double it. To give you some numbers, I won't give you the full picture as I did yesterday, but we've about 5,500 people waiting on the waiting list. We have a stock in Edinburgh of 1,700 plots, so what we're supposed to have is a waiting list no longer than half the number of available plots. So, by my calculations, we are 3,111 plots short of being compliant with Community Empowerment Act. To actually satisfy that demand with a half plot for everybody on that waiting list, we'd need 77 acres of land. Just to give you an idea of what that means, the whole of Inverleith Park is 54 acres. To satisfy the entire waiting list, we would need 130 acres. So that's basically about two and a half times the area of Inverleith Park. The waiting times in Edinburgh are around the sort of 10 to 14-year mark at the moment, so that's people arriving on allotment sites have waited 14 years. I did recently meet a guy who was arriving on my site and I said, you don't look old enough, you know, you've not got grey hair like the rest of us. And he said, I put my name down when it was 12. That's what you need to do these days. So, since that 14-year time lapse, allotments have got even more popular. I don't think it's 14 years realistically. I prefer to do it the other way about and say that we expect the turnover in Edinburgh to be about 90 plots this year. At the moment, with a waiting list of five and a half thousand, one divided by the other gives you a waiting time of about 61 years. So, clearly there is a big gap between demand and supply of allotments. Thanks for that very clear response and all those very useful figures. Jenny, do you want to come in on that? Yes. I think we have similar sort of figures. We're not quite as popular as they are. But the last figure that was given to me a week ago was 1,900 odd on waiting lists and not all the local associations had returned their waiting lists. I think we can then add to that. We've got 12 private sites and I don't think when people apply for allotment they particularly distinguish whether it's GCC or it's a private site. So, we would also have additional demand there. So, I think we're looking at about 2,000. Depending where you are, I think that the site with the most has got 400 people on the waiting list. Turnover times for most of those that I've looked at are in the range of 3 to 5 or so plots a year on each site. So, you can work out for yourself that it's going to take you quite a long time to get a plot. It is also my contention. I'm actually on a group set up under the food growing strategy, which is supposed to have participants working with the local authority. We never had a central waiting list. You've always had one. We never have had. So, each association keeps the waiting list and at the moment Glasgow City Council officers are asking the allotments to give them their waiting list details. I think the trouble with using waiting lists as a measure of demand is precisely the problem I raised at Springburn, i.e. there are large tracks in Glasgow, particularly in the socially deprived areas where people have lost their connection with growing. They've got high-rise flats. They've got very little in the way. They're deprived in terms of there aren't as many parks in those areas. So, to say that the fact that nobody's asking for a plot from Ward, what's it, is a bit of a mistake because those people really don't have access to knowing that it's a possibility or to knowing how to set about it or anything else. Certainly, if you are coming into Glasgow and you go to the GCC website, there is very little information. It literally just gives you contacts of the associations and tells you to apply. That's about it. It's got a publication of the food-growing strategy. But really, the amount of information that's given to you about there's nothing there about the Community Empowerment Act, about the permissions that sex. We have no central waiting list as yet, which we're supposed to have. I've got things I'd like to cover about getting land and things, but later sort of things. Lots of questions will get on there. I'm just going to bring in... But I think on that, just to say, is take in mind the waiting list is an indication of demand, but it's not fully satisfactory in my opinion. I think that's a very good point that not everybody's aware of the potential or possibility or the access that they could have and that needs to work. I'm just going to bring in Richard. He's indicated from online that he would like to come in on this as well. To answer your question directly, it's no. Most of the councils that we've interacted with do not have a food-growing strategy. Some do. The ones that have seemed to indicate that they will assist allotment plots to be developed without actually doing the things themselves. In fact, we get quite a number of people who contact us to say they were looking for going on to a waiting list somewhere and the council has referred them to us, which isn't how it's supposed to work. Emphatically, at the moment, I would say that there's a very slow take-up with regard to adhering to section nine. Okay. Thanks very much, Llu. You asked whether it has, and I think you've had quite a clear answer, whether it can. I'm still quite hopeful. Having worked historically across other parts of the UK, Scotland had an enviable policy environment for community-growing and allotment provision in our policy, and we really need to think now what's changed in the 10 years that we've all been working away hard at the scenes and what more is required. With support from the Scottish Communities Alliance, the community-growing form has done a very light review of the status of the food-growing strategies, how many people had published, what they were saying, how many food-growing strategies, how many allotment waiting lists were embedded in food-growing strategies, how many food-growing strategies had action plans, and you may or may not be aware that, in the build-up to this legislation, there was a really huge amount of civil servant involvement and lots of voluntary contributions from various different organisations, largely represented through forum. There was quite a lot of energy, and local authority officers, through this central person in government, were actually kind of responded, you know, were supported at the time to share breast practice, to talk about what was working, what the issues were, and all that kind of thing. That resource has fallen away, sadly, within the Good Food Nation team, and the forum tries to pick up and has, because we have worked collaboratively with local authorities for many, many years, tries to support local authorities to do this, but it does feel like it's been another ask in a way that hasn't been resourced or supported enough. But if you look at the food-growing strategies, if you read of the 18 that are published, if you read them, some of the language that people charge with writing these things is positive, it's hopeful. People may be somewhat slowly, but nevertheless are beginning to twig on as to the multi-policy cross-sectoral benefits that outdoors activity and people, when empowered and supported to manage and develop a green space, either collectively or individually, and all the models represented that you'll see, actually this enormous potential we have, and we have the policy, we really need to nail down what we're going to do about it. That's really helpful and great to hear about the work that you've been doing with the Scottish Community Forum in terms of analysing the food-growing strategies, that's great. I'm going to move on to questions from Mark Griffin. I wonder if I could come to Richard first. We've touched on issues of waiting lists, and I wonder if you have any idea of how many people across Scotland are currently on a waiting list for an allotment? It's a bit of a difficult one for us, because obviously we can talk about our own membership, but we don't have every allotment on our books or every growing area, because some people like to belong to maybe Gath or Thedigia. Obviously we've got a good handle on the allotments that we have under our wing, and I would say that you're talking in excess of 50 per cent of available spaces, allotment spaces, in the given allotment, are on the waiting list. For example, in Vanessa, where I am from, well, not from. In Vanessa has 68 plots that we currently have for over 90 on our waiting list, and that has been reflected elsewhere. It's a very mixed picture, I have to say, because there are some allotments that don't have a waiting list for some strange reasons. They actually don't physically have a waiting list, so they can't gauge how many people actually want an allotment, so those are issues that we're looking into. In general, I would say that you're looking at more than 50 per cent. Is anyone else able to shed any light on that? Do we have any idea of general numbers of people waiting for allotment, and could local government be doing more to co-ordinate essentially a national or a local authority level register to assist with waiting lists, engage in demand, Stuart? Yes. There is a lot that could be done. At the moment, all the individual authorities are really acting on their own behalf. Some of them will be more active than others. I maintain that to actually operate the Community Empowerment Act, as it was intended, requires the creation of communities. In other words, the Community Empowerment Act has provision for the identification of a piece of land, the creation of a committee, if you like, to oversee the creation of that allotment site. The problem is that people go on to a waiting list, particularly in Edinburgh, and they wait and wait and wait and wait. There is nothing active being done with those people on the waiting list. There's no communication out the way. There's no education about growing vegetables, how to behave on an allotment site happening. But most importantly, what we could do is to say, here's a piece of land, here's all the people that live nearby, they've got their post codes, get in touch with them, empower them and get them building an allotment site. There are grants available. It doesn't have to be all central government money, grants available, so long as you're nothing to do with a local authority, actually. So long as you're a private concern, you can create your own allotment site. That's what it says in the Community Empowerment Act. In fact, that's what it says in Edinburgh's allotment strategy. Edinburgh has come out and said, we don't have the money to do it, therefore any new allotment site will have to be created by the applicants themselves. But we're not communicating to the people on the waiting list. Are there any authorities at all who are doing that proactive engagement work with people on lists to identify sites and encourage them to work together? I'll come to Lou and then Jenny. With a slightly different hat on, I'm about to start working with one local authority to look at shortening their waiting lists. There's an opportunity to, the thing is, if somebody thinks they want to engage with a piece of land or have a go at growing their own and they're a new entrant and they've never done that before, if they don't find a local green space and get involved with a local community project because it's not visible or they're not actively recruiting or whatever it is, then their only other outcome is to sign, their only other possibility, if they know about it, is to sign up for an allotment waiting list. So there is a possibility that lots of people who are saying, I want to have a go at growing my own, I want to engage with the local environment and be supported to do so. We equate growing your own still with allotment growing and yet there are many other models and forms of engagement which could build up to then somebody taking on an allotment once they've got the skills and know how. If we think more creatively about how we approach the grow your own, then there are opportunities to shorten allotment waiting lists, actually go through them because some people have just said, I want an allotment. Actually, do they really want an allotment? Do they want a full size allotment? Do they want a starter plot? Do they actually just want to go out and meet other people? Do they want to have a go at growing their own? Do they know how many hours are involved in growing their own? Is that a realistic commitment? I know what I'm doing. I'm a working mother and I do not have time to get to my allotment and I'm trained. I know what to do. I think there is a real opportunity to work more proactively, collaboratively and creatively with local authorities to have a go at shortening and kind of loosening some of these blockages and actually possibly sifting out, weeding if you like, who really wants to go on and take an allotment and who actually is seeking another model of engagement to have a go at growing local. People might sit on an allotment waiting list for years and then they finally get one and you know how many people when they do their 10 year wait. So we have this enormous surge of interest, a whole series of events colliding and there's an enormous opportunity now to engage more people with our food system and where really good food comes from and meet multiple targets and we really need to think urgently. Now we've been saying this for a long time and it now feels very much like it's now or never, now's the opportunity. The spotlight is on our combined sector and we really need to work collaboratively to take advantage of this and I'm hopeful that things can be done. I think Louis is right in fact that this is an opportunity and secondly I think for all the reasons of climate change and the rest of it it is also an urgency that it happens. Now whilst agreeing with, I mean Glasgow's food growing strategy is fine, there's nothing really to disagree within that and the same could be said about other food growing strategies but this vision particularly I think in an urban environment of people self-organising I think is quite difficult. We've had the model really that has come from sort of island communities or rural communities where it's quite a small community, everybody knows everyone, they know the local land, they know the way it's shaped. You're faced in urban environments with people who don't, you know, I couldn't define where I live in my flat. What's my community? It's quite difficult to define. It's difficult to get in touch with what goes on there. It's all very well to say that people will set up their own allotment associations but there's a problem about getting them in touch with each other because they're individuals on a waiting list and then when you say setting up, sorry Richard, I'm sort of showing something from Highland. Highland in their food growing policy have a sort of flowchart for getting a group and then they've got a flowchart when you've got a group for getting the land. Now, we set up a webinar in Glasgow about a year and a half ago and we tried to attract people who were on the waiting list to come to that and we talked about the Community Empowerment Act and what it's set up. Out of that a small group did form calling themselves the people's plot of people who actually wanted allotments because the trouble, as Stuart said with allotment here, is they're all right Jack. They're sitting on their plot and they're perfectly happy. Why would they worry about the waiting list? You know, tough. It's not actually their responsibility. Now the people's plot people are quite active professional type people. They are now a year and a half on and they've just about got to getting themselves incorporated. Once they've done that they've got to find a piece of land which they can get off the map on the thing, on the website. Though I find it a very difficult map to work with but anywhere that's up to judgment. They've then got to survey that local community as to whether it's acceptable to them. They've got to conduct a survey, a desktop study to find out what the services are. They've got to then find out whether that land is contaminated in any sort of way. If it takes them five years I think that that would be really moving fast to actually get to actual plots and people able to stick their spade in it and that is the difficulty. I think that's an enormous barrier and in a way because we've lost unions and cooperatives and all the sort of self help groups that used to exist in the working class districts. A lot of people now don't have any experience of self governing of organising these things and doing this stuff and you're looking at people who are acting as volunteers. I haven't added in yet grant funding you know so this little group gets together and one lot of grant funding wants them to show how they're moving things in the local community. Another one wants them to show how they're going to spread diversity and somebody's got to sit there and write funding bids that are angled at each of these things to try and get small pots of money. I mean it's madness I think honestly. You know if you haven't got people who actually did this for a living grant applications and all the rest of it without support as volunteers with working jobs which don't pay that well so you are running all hours. I just think it's an unreasonable demand and there's no resourcing. I mean Stuart is right to say local authorities are feeling cut to the bone etc it actually needs I think as Lou was pointing out it needs a lot of support if we're to go down that line and it's also a violation of the promise in the CEA. The CEA says if you as an individual want a plot and you've been on that waiting list for five years the local authority should offer you one it does not say you should get together with a load of people and form a group and find the latent and do all that so that needs on picking some way because every load I don't know whether all of them give this self-help approach do they? Yeah many of them do. I mean the thing is that the models I mean Richard will concur and maybe add to but the models of accessing allotments are so different you know some local authorities manage all their allotments sites some manage no allotments sites some manage some allotments sites and others other people are managed by a devolved voluntary led management associate management committees but on local authority land and these are volunteer led so in on my allotment site there's one man who's a retired civil servant and he's wound out and stressed by you know who's going to take on managing these things he's never busier and it's not pleasant either because people are desperate for land and he's just having to turn around and say no he's not it's yeah so we we have we have an issue I don't know if you want to add anything Richard and we need to think about creatively about how we we sought it that you wanted to come in yep you're absolutely right Lou and one of the people said there's not just allotments there are other growing opportunities which need to be considered but to address the the point of numbers on the waiting list I've just done a quick extrapolation here and I would say to you I wouldn't be surprised if it's in excess of 10 000 across Scotland that might be conservative as well the thing is that question if you'll forgive me for saying this should be asked of the local authorities shouldn't they be able to give you that information if they are adhering to the community empowerment act certainly a question that we'll intend to put to them and be reflecting your comments back to the authorities when we come to them I just wanted to come to the part of the act that we've touched on already that waiting list well local authority should take reasonable steps to ensure number of people on waiting lists there's no more than half of the available allotments do you know where that figure came from was that just plucked out of there is that a reliable or reasonable figure to use probably is a figure that you would expect to be able to supply an allotment to someone within five years I think that's probably and that potentially but I would imagine that we're based on turnover of an allotment stock over five years therefore means that you should be able to get on to an allotment it does it seems to make sense to me actually okay okay thanks and finally convener I just wanted to ask a question about waiting lists and how they operate well we've spoke about the immense benefit in physical mental health contribution to household bills through to food grown is it appropriate that a waiting list should operate on a time-only basis or should we be looking at an allotment allocation policy that is based on need rather than time never been thought about it's always been a waiting list ever since allotments happened I think it I just yeah okay possibly the trouble is that people with a with an existing allotment have got deep roots and therefore you can't just move them off I don't think anyway tricky one don't know if anyone else wants to comment I think um I think it depends on what the organisations are you know a lot of the associations are formed on the ground of a kind of mutual society basis that everybody has a share and as long as they are members and are paying their rents and are obeying the rules and doing what they should be doing they are not allowed to be held off you know you can't sort of say oh well you've had your five years with the allotment now somebody else's term in part because it's it's the it's the state of their incorporation or otherwise if you like if they're if they're not incorporated unincorporated organisations they are still operated on the whole like a co-operative like a society and you're a member of that society when you when you take on your plot so it as Stuart says it is time and tradition it's partly because of the way they you know where we are they they were originally called springburn workmen's allotment gardens and they were set up as part of that working class self suficiency they were co-operatives industrial and Providence societies set up for mutual benefit I get your point I think it's a really interesting pertinent question but I would hate to see allotments become places that could have stigma attached to them and I think this is the role of community growing spaces and more of them where there's tons of potential for reciprocal relationships shared food I think the committee has been out and visited a couple of funded projects that are specifically in areas defined by the economic disadvantage and yet they do food provision with dignity they're talking about active citizenship actually they're really doing their bit the work they do has status rather than a label attached to asking for food it's a reciprocal we give we receive or we redistribute in a way that's fairer or we're saving food going from landfill by running community meals or uniform swaps or I think these are the creative approaches that you know we need to have all on the table and none of these none of these um these methods aren't about intervention these aren't about social services there's no um the food pantry network some of the community meals these these are funded projects and actually largely the network when people are active on the ground is entirely volunteer led so some of the projects you will have visited will or will visit are funded models they operate on a beam they're working cross sectorally they're social working but they're doing it evenings and weekends with no referral with no stigma with nobody attending with labels and these are the really you know unsung heroes and there's tons of potential for more of these ways of working and I'm not just talking about in communities of economic disadvantage I'm talking about Scotland wide we could have a whole load more of this yes there are barriers and there's a huge amount of work to do but we've known what the barriers are we've known what the potential is for a long time um and we haven't supported and resourced enough and I think that would sort if we could think more creatively about it we wouldn't be having to say only people who who need to grow their own food um can have access to an allotment and would those people would those people who who are hungry really go down and work an allotment I mean that that's a big question to ask too I think that would be it I think it's a really interesting one but I think it's a tricky line to take thanks thanks Lou I think Richard wants to also come in on this yes so the 50% is very much um based around the fact that you're going to have that um turnover within five years um so at the moment we're way past that one of the caveats I would put on that is it needs to be considered on a site by site basis rather than saying okay we've got 50% in the whole of Edinburgh because um people at one side of Edinburgh won't want to have to travel right the way through to the other side of Edinburgh to in order to have an allotment um and just really to finish that one off um is it based on time or need it's based on both I would I would say um so yeah we need to I think rework that paragraph a little bit just to make it more precise as to what it actually does mean okay thank you thanks for those responses I'm now going to bring willy coffee in with a series of questions thanks very much good morning to everybody I wonder if I could explore a little bit with you the difference between formal allotments and non allotment growing spaces Lou you've mentioned it several times and the reason I ask about this is that my own authority East Asia doesn't run any allotments because in their judgment the demand is met by other means community growing spaces here there and everywhere so is there an opportunity there to enable us across Scotland to to get these numbers down in the formal allotment process waiting list process by developing better newer more imaginative processes in community growing to tackle that Lou could have perhaps start with you and get your thoughts on that I think we would advocate both I think we and when we talk about growing in communities we mean a whole load of different models just to be really clear most of them are largely unfunded and volunteer managed so we're talking about allotments and within that you have community quite often community plots within allotments we could talk about community growing spaces that come in all shapes and sizes some of the more complex ones the committee will be visiting we could talk about community orchards we could talk about a virgin side growing there's a whole raft of things I would I would certainly argue there is a space for allotments I think the kind of benefits of we have talked about new new entrance and refuge and sanctuary sometimes that's really required when people kind of need to work and make a reconnection by themselves before they they go beyond that so many people if they're lucky enough to have a garden or access to green space are able to find that within their green space so I think we can as I've said kind of collaborate and think more creatively about how we shorten allotment waiting lists I think some of the questions when people sign up from it maybe we need to think about some kind of centralized way of when people click a button and say I want to engage with my local environment but I need supported to do so or I want access to land we need to think about how we do that I think conversely we also need to ask a question does everybody who wants an allotment or wants to engage in food growing or their local environment immediately think that they go to their local authority because some local authorities would say they in themselves are a barrier so some local authorities as a result of community empowerment legislation have put personnel in place who are making things happen some of those personnel also recognize that actually many communities might not want to engage with a council authority they might rather engage with an intermediary so we really need to think about the role of the local authorities the potential where we still have them for community learning development workers we need to think about third sector interfaces there's tons of potential our issue is resource and collaboration and the time and the means to do that has left our sector fragmented and disjointed and in answer kind of willy it's difficult because one of the issues about our sector is that how people relate to their local environment is such a personal thing and people and groups need bespoke support to do so we can't we can't make everything generic if we boil everything down to a system we take the magic of some of the things that we simply can't measure the unintended consequences the conversations the friendships that are made on allotments sites and community growing sites sat under a tree you know so some of these things are really really hard to measure and if we start to just think about resourcing things because we can measure them then we've kind of missed the point and so there in lies the nub is kind of like i think we have to have something for everyone we know it's cost effective it's not you know it does need intelligence it does need collaboration and thinking about how we do things and it does need bespoke and drilled down into every local authority i would totally agree with that i think we just need to be really careful how we do it so that we don't squeeze the magic out of it because we'll lose people i'm just curious maybe turn to steward mean what's happening here if you sit there's about 5000 we think they'll be waiting what is it that's causing 5000 people to be waiting for an allotment in Edinburgh when there's nobody waiting for a community growing space in East Ayrshire what's happening that's different there might be there isn't there isn't a waiting list for i'd just like to grow a few herbs in a wee box somewhere so they put themselves down onto the allotment waiting list so i do think there is some work to do there and that is to refine that figure to really find out what people want before you start building them definitely there's something to be done there yeah i think the last time there was a review i think he cut down about a third a third a third to a full plot a half plot and just to we raise bed but if we can get people on raised beds to start with to kind of prove that they can actually garden grow food and they enjoy it before they then go up to a half plot possibly maybe that's the way of doing it maybe you could start on a community garden but yeah of the people that are on that 5000 are basically participating by other means that lose been described but do you think they're also um no i do say they want their own private space i think that's the difference between allotments in a community space um i would hate to go on a community space actually it's like where's my cabbage you're going no i grew that and i want that so yeah allotments are different um people want even if it is just a small allotment they want their own space they want to be able to put their deck chair next to it and go look what i grew it's as simple as that there's something very basic about this and that is the provision that's in the community empowerment act the asset transfer process isn't that been deployed by to try to break this barrier and access to pieces of land i think that that's there i mean one of the suggestions we've had in Glasgow is saying in a sense you just want to let's just get going with it you know let's just make a start but sort of thinking because Glasgow has so many parks that if you took a fairly small percentage of the park space in all those parks you would probably with a mix of community gardens and allotments and things um be able to smash that list and the advantage of using land that's already in the local authorities and grasp and where they know that the land is not contaminated because it hasn't been used and where they're having a hell of a time because they can't pay to have the park kept as it used to be kept um you know in former crises like the world wars allotments and community growing moved into the parks like a shot you know if we're taking the climate climate emergency seriously and i think that was what was so interesting about the place simulation we've got to start thinking radically as Lou says and get on with it and and you know find a way of actually getting down to things because i think one of the things as well is um people may be interested in growing but if they get tangled up in all this participation one of the one of the issues i think is that the community empowerment act is great but it's calling for the big society place isn't it and it's sort of it's got to catch up with how what kind of structures do you need to get that going you know in in Glasgow certainly they've got the area partnerships arrangement and they've allowed some budgeting to go to area partnerships which are based on the wards there might be structures around that that would work in terms of community councils there but you know some places have got active community councils or development trusts other places haven't it's very very variable and one of the difficulties i think in a way is if you're going to have a participative democracy and this is partly what this is about you've got to change both the people who want to participate want things and the people who have been running things previously so i mean we've attended all the participatory opportunities in Glasgow and i have to say both sides are very bad at it you know they really don't don't know how to do it they don't know how they know the words like co-working and all the rest of it but actually how you do it how you make it real how you make it meaningful for people it's going to take quite a while right thank jenny thanks we'll have just one final question just for i think richard me have wanted to come in earlier do you richard yeah the question was what's the difference between allotment and a growing space allotments are growing spaces very much the same as anywhere else except for obviously you've got your own personal growing space and the big difference is that it's protected in theory with the law there are only certain things you can do with allotments as far as closing down transferring them whatever else whereas if you've got a communal growing space there are no protection for those areas so they could easily get wiped out moved on i'm involved with the highland good food partnership up here and there is a very wide variety of growing opportunities so we've got the allotments there's communal growing there's individual places around the highlands which have been utilised for individual growing so there's a wide range and that all of that really needs to be taken into consideration as far as community asset transfers are concerned that's quite a long and difficult process and it does need formal structures to be created in order to take over land it's something a few people around our area of being looking into so that's a little bit of a complex process me takes a bit of time to get sorted out and the last point is as far as airships concerned in hindsight i wish i'd kept all the emails that i've answered and then deleted because i'm pretty certain one of the emails that i did get was from somebody in airship who said that they were looking to go on the waiting list and the council referred them to sags because they don't keep anything formal so that needs to be looked into i don't think it's as simple as perhaps you think it might be okay thanks willy so i'm just going to like lay the future out into for the next um maybe a bit more than a half an hour at this point so we've got about seven or eight questions and we're going to try to cover three themes and some of it you may have already covered because you're doing such brilliant work here it's in in great what you're sharing with us so we're going to move into the next theme is going to be around the implementation of the act and the size of the assumptions around the size of the allotments then we'll bring in a bit more of the local food strategies which you started to touch on Lou and then we want to talk a little bit about get a greater understanding from you about community organisations volunteering and planning which again we've touched in a little bit so just giving us a sense that we've still got quite a lot to try to cover but i think we've also touched on a lot of things already so i'm going to bring in Marie McNair with a couple of questions around the size of the plots good morning panel and thanks for your time this morning just explore the implementation of the act and the size assumptions then a general question do any of the panel have views on the guidance and any other support from Scottish government to local authorities when part nine came into force in april 2018 and are you aware of this guidance what else should be done to ensure compliance with the act just pop that out to Andy size in fact um the site visit yesterday that shipping container that was where the decision was made 250 square metres um Marco Biagio turned up in february in a very light suit and leather sole shoes and poor man nearly froze to death in there but anyway 250 square meters is a reasonable amount of space if you are catering for a family of four it provides enough space to grow crops rotate those crops which is obviously gardening good practice it also allows space for permanent fruit trees shared possibly a greenhouse and possibly the most important thing is a compost bin if you have a plot as we are finding in edinburgh that's the sort of by practice if a plot becomes free it's halved so you get two people on the first thing to go is the compost bin it sounds pretty trivial but it's really important because then people start burning rubbish they start throwing it away into landfill when it could be used for putting back on to the ground um what we've had to do on my allotment site is to build communal composting areas where people can actually dump this stuff themselves and then come back and take compost back to their allotments um we've also recently been able to get a grant to get a a chipping machine which chops this stuff stuff up as well so we can compost quicker so that's really the reason for 250 square meters any smaller and you start being you start losing bits that are important but are considered probably less important by a new allotment holder I think the guidance allows for different sizes of plots okay so um if if you took the 250 square meters mathematically you would get 40 plots to a hectare hectare on most allotment sites there are probably more many quite a few more plots than that there probably will get something like 60 60 plots maybe 70 plots out of it because on a lot of allotment sites you've got what they call starter plots which might be a couple of beds half plots and then a varying large plots in terms of size um I think what makes an allotment different is that it's somebody's garden you know it might be quite little but it's their garden they design it they create it they have it as they nurture it they look after it and they love it so there's something about that issue there so I think the guidance in the act actually allows for quite a variability in the size of plots and I think that bears with the population we have you know we've got people who are working two jobs and something like that and they still want to come out in a nice green space but they haven't got much time so they they wouldn't want you know a large plot you've got to go down I would say at least two days a week and put in several hours if you're going to maintain that it's not it's not light work so we do need a variety of plot sizes there I mean I think um I think the legislation has always been flexible I think they safeguarded a size that they felt was workable and reasonable in terms of output I've read one local authority food growing strategy where I felt that the size was being questioned and used um and I used possibly as an excuse not to provide allotments and I think that's really dangerous because we this is a local authority particularly where you know there's been absolutely tons of house building going on and land for food growing is being lost and I think that's really worrying so I don't think we should be um I don't know whether the others agree but I don't I think I don't think we should be diverted by size I think most of the other local authority food growing strategies that I've read um say that that's not an issue there's flexibility within that and I think we need to safeguard and hold on to land as much as possible if you really looked at how much land it would take to grow food for a family of four um we urgently have an issue with land and we urgently to tie into the MPF for um piece that's that's kind of going through just now we really seriously have a problem if we are not safeguarding land for food growing all forms of food growing so allotments community growing market gardens farming um you know land is being adequate sufficient appropriate land is being lost at the rate of knots at our peril and we wrote the legislation you know well I didn't write the legislation but when the you know it's already dated for our modern day times where are we going to be in 15 years time so we really urgently need to safeguard this land and not um not throw out with 250 square metres I think I think too in the past you know new developments are going up and land has not been allocated money has been handed over to local authorities but it's not actually getting used for land for growing and the place standard as it stood a local place planning 20 minute neighbourhood planning planning generally there is no category at the moment which is land for growing right if becoming a good food nation if localising food is incredibly important then we need to change those plant planning frameworks so that they actually encourage people to think that that is something that should be available thanks Richard Zendiniels you want to add sorry to put in the spot no that's right Marie can you just repeat your question because obviously there's two parts to my second part I didn't ask it but it's been covered obviously just any of the panel views and guidance and any other support from the Scottish Government to local authorities when part nine came into force in April 2018 and are you aware of this guidance what else should be done to ensure compliance with the act yeah I think everybody's aware of the the guidance the 250 square metres it was a bit of a strange number when I saw that down in England the common size I think they call it perch is 10 yards by 30 yards and that's a pretty sizable allotment I used to have one when I would live down in England takes an awful lot of time the interesting thing is I can say this it's not the size it's the quality and the thing is if people have got big allotments for example 300 square yards or 250 square meters they tend to spread their produce out a little bit more and you will see with the smaller plots that people actually make more use of that land more effectively there was a report Stuart mentioned earlier on from Zick Downing Brighton somewhere I think Stuart where they compared allotments to intensive farming and allotments were producing meter by meter the same amount of food as an intensive farming process would so in my allotments as an example we actually don't come anywhere near that 250 square meters the biggest we have is 150 square meters and since our weight in us has gone up and up and up we've tended to split the bigger plots down which we're now thinking hold on that might be a mistake because if you do reduce the plots obviously then people are not going to get as much food as maybe they want to get for a family of four or a family of five so I agree with Lou the 250 meters shouldn't be there as a prescriptive size and yes I agree with Lou that I think that's becoming a barrier in some instances where local authorities are saying we haven't got the wherewithal to be able to provide 250 square meters for as many people as wants a plot so from my perspective I don't think overall that that is being implemented I think it is sometimes a matter of common sense as to you've got an area of land how many plots can you realistically fit in of a smaller size thanks Richard we've obviously taken evidence from representatives of councils as we proceed is there anything else you'd like us to to raise with them or the Scottish Government councils to be honest with you I was very frustrated with the Highland Council up until last year because they really didn't have anything at all adhering to the community empowerment act and then last year they engaged I think 10 people across Highlands to look at through going strategy there's still a lot of work to do it's an infant it's in its infancy but I'm really encouraged by what they're doing and whereas Jenny was saying money isn't being allocated for new allotments in general yes that's absolutely 100 correct up here in the Highlands they're developing a new town just outside of Venice called and they've actually put in one set of allotments which is being totally taken up and I think I'm right in saying that they're actually going to put a second set of allotments in there so I am looking at the Highland Council and what they're doing with great interest and working closely with them because I think they're doing some good stuff now I would just concur that's been my experience of Highland too I think they're an example of a team that does get it is trying it is taking time so Highland the lady who was sorry the woman who was previously they allocated a food growing strategy I'm not quite sure what her job title was anyway contacted me with kind of various inquiries and one of them was about managing expectation so Highland Council were looking for land but there are issues around planning that are slowing a lot of these things down change of loot use planning permission so our experience has been with local authorities that where are the bits other departments of local authorities get it then you know the wheels turn a bit faster and planning is the really obvious one where planning and food growing officers possibly that was her her job title so her issue had been managing expectation people champion at the bit to get on to the land and yet the process is taking time and putting the infrastructure in taking time particularly building new sites does take time it's happening in Edinburgh new craig hall is a big housing estate put up there and part of that is allotments so I think yet Edinburgh plan has got it too but it's not really satisfying the needs of the waiting list it's it is actually addressing the needs of the people that move into the houses there but not the wider society thank you the same being asked as well I was think with some of the new developments they are putting in growing spaces but of course there's a lot of catch up there was a lot of building where there was nothing thank you give me that's me thanks Marie I'm now going to bring in Miles Briggs you could be no good morning to the panel and maybe I should start by declaring interest as I am one of the 5000 on a waiting list in Edinburgh but I wanted you've answered a couple of questions I had but I wanted to return to a few points specifically around access to grants and other forms of funding Stuart you mentioned you'd received a grant for the chipper what sort of funding streams do you have available to you as an organisation and specifically thinking about those who are trying to set up allotment spaces where would you recommend they would then go to get that grant funding my experience is not particularly broad about setting up new allotment sites but I can tell a story of one out in Livingston who got a substantial grant from climate challenge fund and again that was a fund that was available to communities but not to councils so that again is a bit of a disconnect that there is money there but you have to be doing it yourself and not via the council they've got a wonderful site it was rather good that the climate challenge people insisted that no water was piped in there all the water is collected from shed roofs they have a composting loo a very very nice place to be unlike actually a lot of Edinburgh allotment sites where we do have water but we don't have toilets you'll find that people are having to go in their sheds good for the compost team though is anyone else I think setting up I think is is is quite difficult again there's a there's a big development at Rikazi that's taking place and that's again with the community trust that's there and they have got a very large grant I think it I think it will depend on where you are our particular allotment site we had grants from the lottery fund at one time we've had grants from volunteer matters we've had grants from our area partnership there are lots of little you you get some people are concerned about climate issues which you then angled at that others want community issues you angle to that etc it's quite difficult to always get a large fund to do a project that you want so setting up an allotment I think if you had a decent side would come under that kind of heading some of the stuff for instance if if I took the people's plot people they're looking for grants for them to actually undertake the surveys on land and do that kind of thing and at one time the lottery fund did give you work were giving money for we want to set up a project and this is what we need to do but they've stopped doing that now it it it is quite tricky you you know we have one person on our committee who specialises in this receives all the communication about grants and gets on with it and often you're having to pick and mix from different little bits here and differently but they're all aimed at it it's quite difficult I think the grant funding for me is quite difficult because you can't say this is the project and you can't get somebody say oh that sounds like a really good project in the round yeah let we'll we'll back you I did find that with the area partnership that they would do that within the limits that they've got but a lot of others will say oh you've got to demonstrate these performance indicators or you've got to demonstrate so you find yourself writing quite mendacious bids because you can't actually say this is actually what we want to do because you've got to say what they want you to say they want to do and I don't know whether you experience that same thing that you it it's we're looking particularly at community gardens and some of those places and I think that they suffer from this same thing of the short term funding you know you get started you just get your head around it then you've got to sit down and actually start thinking how are you going to demonstrate and how are you going to put in for the next bit of grant that would enable you to do the next year and it's not a good way of working it really isn't it would be better if you could say this is the project and you know it rolls forward as we go and we measure how it's succeeding as we go and we will look at things like well-being as it goes instead of badoing to have Lou come in yes I think we need to I think we need to separate capital startup costs in terms of what a new allotment startup site might might cost in terms of possibly ffensing or water infrastructure or water boats or sheds or pathways or an accessible toilet so I was recently quoted by one local authority officer a thousand pounds per plot more or less I don't know if Richard concurs with that so that's just infrastructure that's not things like public liability and management and then if you talk about revenue and I wasn't sure whether quite what your question was angling at but I could talk I could chew your ear for hours about the funding situation in our sector particularly some of the projects that you will have visited who you know you've seen a preventative working preventatively they're half the price of what the local authority could deliver that you know it's they they have arisen as a response to local needs so real empowerment and yet many of these projects are working on short-term funding cycles on a beam they lose you know they lose people because people can't afford to work in in their own community sometimes and then with so there is funding I wish it were better joined up more collaboratively and with the greatest respect from government the Scottish government there's been various streams of funding we you know as a network we have said the same thing over and over it needs to be adequate quite often the funding that's delit you know that's kind of rolled out from government is inappropriate and if we had just been invited to have a conversation about what was needed and what might be the best way of spending it we would collaborate and ensure that that money goes better you know is more appropriately spent and more widely spent so the community growing forum has through the Scottish communities alliance is able to distribute some money through the pockets and prospects scheme that's to small groups working in areas of disadvantage and there's huge amount of flexibility with that money we're only talking you know between 500 and 2 000 pounds but you'd be amazed at what's horrifying is the established groups who really are delivering what essentially is statutory services who've come and said can I have 500 quid please to run a community meal next next month that's that's not good enough you know that really isn't good enough one of the benefits of that grant is it really is down to the community they decide how they spend it they don't jump through hoops as intermediaries where the people who say we know what you're doing that money will we endorse their application because they're known to us and then there's this sector so the community growing forum is made up of quite a few intermediary organisations who are experts who support people on the ground because as we've established many of them are volunteer led and quite often need a phone call a resource maybe a little bit more support to keep going or a conversation whatever they need we're on a you know we're on short term funding cycles quite often starting to deliver in april may of a financial year with no idea as to whether we're going to have any money to carry on or whether we need to start looking for work so I think we have more than argued and proven that these models are cost effective I think we need to really look at resource and I can guarantee you that resource would be adequately and appropriately spent but we would we would like to have a conversation across all sectors of government about how how we could work together and work preventatively in many in many cases and see effective resource thanks Richard wants to come in and then we'll move on to the next question I'll be brief there is quite a wide range of funding sources out there obviously the big go to is the national lottery and they have different drives every now and again there are locally quite a few options you know the supermarkets like Tesco as the co-op and scott made they all do small funding amounts every now and again which a lot of people do tend to go to there's recently been one which is the dandelion projects and I think I'm right in saying that was a government back drive some of these like the dandelion project are very prescriptive as to what they are going to award funds for for example it was all aimed at I think this one was for a harvest festival later on in the year but you have to have that linked with the arts you have to do a musician all those kind of things in there which for somebody like organizations such as allotments that's not really that practical to sort out in the short period of time but there's all the other organizations that sags have been involved with they do advertise funding opportunities from time to time you know from the Scottish community alliance or social families or whatever and in fact sags themselves were just about to hand out £12,000 worth of grants to our members so there's there are a wide variety of funding options out there it's just whether they can be tapped into because of their restrictions or whatever they tend to be quite small amounts of money compared with the thousands that we'd need to create new allotments sites Ian Woolard yesterday was saying that he could actually build a site for 200 people for about £400,000 so that puts the figure at near a £2,000 per plot but I'd say that's a good investment really. Before I hand it back I didn't fancy it seemed to come up a lot yesterday in the conversations we had and you just mentioned that £400,000 we also saw a project with a £35,000 fence it was a deer fence which was quite a basic fence but you know did live with the same outcome and I think in terms of that barrier and you know looking at real opportunities to get these things built quicker that's maybe so in being interested to see some pursuing around because if the land's there that fencing option seems to be maybe holding back projects coming online so I don't know if you've had anything to add about projects you know haven't gone forward because of that specific barrier of not being able to put up a barrier and whether or not you can let us know maybe beyond this this meeting if you're aware of any any of those sorts of issues. The only issue that I've come across is that again in our Edinburgh allotment strategy we do have a list of potential allotment sites in there. All is classified as green space but also common good but the planners don't like common good land being fenced and I think that an allotment site probably does need some sort of barrier around it just to sort of keep it to that community so that's a bit of a rub as well actually identifying land and providing that land for an allotment site. Thanks Miles that's quite illuminating that planners don't like common good being fenced yeah something to explore so I'm going to pick up the theme of the local food growing strategies and Lou you had started to open up and share quite a lot of the extensive work you've been doing there and I'm just curious to understand from you maybe more of your sense of why there's approximately eight local authorities that still haven't published their local food growing strategy despite them being required to have done so by April 2020. So a last count I looked at I could find 18 of 32 were published. A couple of those local authorities I know have allotment strategies so and I think there has been possibly some confusion as to who includes what in a food growing strategy and who includes what in an allotment strategy and I think that maybe needs unpicked a bit more but I am aware that some people are well aware of their statutory obligations and are kind of prioritising possibly I'm not here to make an excuse for local authorities. I don't think they've had an easy time though and the key person who was leading the key civil servant who was supporting them and driving that forward is as I spoke earlier left and then we've had Covid and a whole load of other things happen so there's been lots of there could be a whole load of reasons there's only one local authority that hasn't published that I'm aware of that is citing the pandemic as the reason as to why they have not published. So the others that haven't published I have no idea I do know actually here's some inside intelligence I do know of one we worked with one local authority employee who was very diligent and very forensic on the strategic environmental impact assessment identifying land the whole gambit she was with us in the forum for several years and their food growing strategy got to committee and it was thrown out so you know who knows I think also sometimes in in some areas it's been a kind of it it's been much easier to find without the kind of stats and figures in front of me it's been much easier to find local food growing strategies in dense urban areas or so the central belt and the big cities obviously and actually some you know some of the big cities are you know what they're saying if what they're doing on the tin and we've heard that sometimes that's not necessarily been the case is encouraging they're getting it they have frustrations with other bits of government possibly with other areas of local authority government so I'm not I can't give you an answer the ones who haven't published are the ones that we don't collaborate with so I've worked in this sector for a long time and there've been food growing there's been people in charge of food growing strategies and I know quite a few of them and kind of we work with them we share intelligence or we put them in touch with one another in a way that historically has happened through the good food nation team but we've kind of lost resource there the ones who haven't published I don't know whether it's in my in I think they're largely possibly off the top of my head I think they're kind of more rural does that mean that there isn't allotment demand will Richard has highlighted not necessarily in the case of parts of East Ayrshire so yeah I can't I can't give you a definitive answer as to why not but anybody who wants to work with the forum regardless of whether they've published or not we're happy to work with them that's that's great offer and and and thanks for some of the insight that's that's very helpful as well do you think the food strategies are the ones that exist are they doing enough to demonstrate how allotment and community growing space provision is meeting the needs of all communities including those experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage I think some really get it from the language whether those people who wrote them are still in place or whether they were drafted in to write something and then left you know that's that's an issue I think some of the action plans I think those with action plans are good we're able to kind of see who's working how with what where who and then we're able to connect having read a couple it was evident that there were a couple of people who needed to be put in touch with each other I think a couple of people writing the strategies and I don't know whether they will be then charged with taking things forward in government local government or not clearly don't clearly don't understand the different forms of growing in communities and and the bit that worries me there is that they lose tools at their disposal if you're not aware of just how diverse this sector can be then you're how can you solve a problem if you only think that the solution is one particular model we have multiple proven models across Scotland that need mainstreamed they need more of them we need more provision of all of it and so I think that's a bit worrying quite a few of them talked about food quite a few of them got the language of the good food nation quite a few of them talked about risk and risk mitigation in terms of resource in terms of not being connected up to other bits of local government so quite a few of them seem to have been written in isolation so just to kind of reflect off the top of my head possibly that's more about where people came to the table late as a result of their statutory requirement and we're kind of starting to write and have written something they haven't whereas we have other other local authorities who've been at this for quite a while because they've been resourced they have found the resource to do so they've obviously got it and they've gone and spoken to other you know justice planning land so I think maybe and I'd have to go back and kind of rethink about this but I think possibly the maybe the local authorities that came later to the table who were like oh we need to do this um we're but we're kind of possibly starting to think about how are they going to do things where others who've been at it for a while have action plans they've got child and tested models they've got the cross sector all opportunities they get the need for equity and to link in you know food provision and and to kind of make it to make it real and how they need to do that in areas of economic and social disadvantage so just to reverse one thing I just said about rural communities and I don't really want to name local authorities particularly but Argyll and Bute to kind of counter what I said you know largely rural have got an excellent food growing strategy so I so I reverse what I say about possibly some of the more rural local authorities because that's a really really good one thank you for that I'm going to move on to another theme around community organisations volunteering and planning and I'm going to bring in Paul McClellan on those questions and just to say we are at 11 33 so we'll probably go for another 10 or 15 minutes on this and then that's a conclusion thanks thanks convener thanks panel I've had three questions I'll try and wrap them up into one just in conscious of the time we visited Leith community croft last week and there's a few issues that Kenny came up one was around about volunteering and trying to encourage volunteering and I suppose in areas where there's lower levels of volunteering how that can be filled into the community wealth building agenda so it's maybe touching these two issues and the other issue and I think you've kind of touched on this as well as in terms of where planning comes in we've been discussing the NPR for I think a lot of local authorities are preparing their local development plans where they should be looking about a lands for allotment you touched about new developments but it needs to go beyond that so I'm just wondering if you can if there's anything to add on the planning aspect so one in volunteering two on community wealth building and three on on planning around about the community I suppose the community organisations but anywhere else you want to kind of add in in that regard we might have to revisit some of these questions planning let's start at the last one my feeling is if our sector had and this is the work of the forum if our sector had more recognition and more status and more mass engagement it's still alternative not I don't mean kind of radical hippie alternative I mean it's still alternative it's not mainstream the idea of people coming together in a green space and improving it and growing food and connecting it's not mainstream and it needs to be if we're going to address multiple societal issues particularly the climate emergency then planning should be coming to us us you know we have a body we're a voluntary body we work voluntarily most people come to the table they're not paid to be there they're paid because they're hopeful that despite being having been at the table for many many years we have an enviable policy environment and yet we can still make this work so we are hopeful as a sector I would like planning to come to us so there are issues there's the npf there's this structural planning that we just don't value green space or and and and we are not allocating sufficient land for food provision and I'm not talking about Scotland becoming self-sufficient I'm just talking about npf was laudable it talked about meeting climate targets the whole 20 minute neighbourhoods you know wonderful but very little mention of how we're going to be more resilient and grow more of our own food and how we're going to because one of the key things we've had in npf4 was talking about local place plans and I think if it's down to locality because I'm down in East Lothian it's got the worst longest waiting list in Scotland I understand so now down in my own town I'm in St Dunbar we've got a community garden there's also an allotment great stuff going on there's also community owned grocery that's it so the community itself has been very active in dealing with that so that there's lessons to learn there but they got very much involved in the local place plan so I don't know if you want to add anything on about local place plans because I think the more local the planning becomes the more chance it has of actually happening but to go back to Jenny's point you have a massive disconnect about how we don't do things properly and I would like to get involved in my local community council there are too many barriers I've got kids I've got a job and and I've got an allotment and I simply don't and it's a matter of priority and so how do you how you know how do we and I'm I'm educated and empowered compared to many many people who would benefit enormously from this so there is a massive disconnect I want to do it I don't want to talk about it anymore I don't want I just want to do it it's taken me months of meetings to get three apple trees part planted in my local community you know so I just want to do it I don't really want to talk about it I think that's what we feel quite strongly you know people want to do it and if they could do it they will work out what they want to do and how they want to organise and we we it's it's a matter of risk and trust and it's actually trusting people to let them have a go rather than putting the barriers up and the second thing is having a way of evaluating which is far more evolutionary which says okay we'll go and suck it and see if it doesn't work we're not going to sit around saying who's to blame for this we're going to say right what can we learn from this what are we going to stop doing what are we going to do next and carrying on like that because oh god I speak as having acted as a development officer for the Scottish government one time and one of the things is you can't tell people you can't write things to people that will work you've actually got to get them in and on it and doing it with you and you've got to have a really good feedback loop that picks up oh yeah that's not quite right that's a and that's that thing also about then getting a longevity to a thing because the other thing people need is if we've got a vision for having this allotment here let's see it develop you know the idea that you've got to spend all your time going through all this bureaucratic stuff and you still can't stick this trowel in the earth is is really it's totally the opposite of empowerment one of the main things that came through last week was perseverance it took a little longer for the then at least it took a long period of time and you know other people might have walked away you know and there was one one or two key individuals that pushed it forward if they had walked away the whole thing probably would have collapsed so i would mirror that scotland wide i think richard would probably say the same but certainly for community growing spaces they're you know they're led by well you've met some of them aspirational visionary people and they need urgently cloned i think part of our role is how do we support that and how do we raise up a local authority so that i think that's a key takeaway from the visit last week and the key takeaway and i'm sorry i couldn't make the visit yesterday but a key takeaway from from today is it's almost building capacity within that before because if we don't support and build capacity people will walk away and we'll miss opportunities that are there so that's coming through very strongly for myself and that that is a really strong thing to build that capacity takes time to build and that in the planning what you've got to look at is who is it we actually want to enable and how are we making sure they're in on this from the beginning and how do we all learn together we'll make mistakes because we've not done it before that's not the end of the world we can re regroup i think the key thing for me for me different laws of different authorities are the enablers or their facilitators if they're enablers then you know what's the role of their facilitators how can they support that facilitation and i think again that's a key takeaway for me because we're hearing from different stories from different parts of the scotland so i think there's only if they are going to be enabled then enable if they're going to be facilitators then support and try and build up what's there you know they can't be kind of falling between the cracks if you know what i mean because if they're neither there's going to be issues and again i think that's a key thing i think he's keen to come in and i'm going it's hard when people are in a virtual space to be able to get in so i'm just letting him get his wedgie and come on in richard right i'll be brief again paul you're absolutely right what you just said just to focus on your local development plans historically when i've been involved in local development plans they're very much broad brush so this area is going to be for housing this area is going to be for commercial this area is for that within that housing bit needs to be broken down and it's something i was pushing with the Highland Council for a long long time but it was falling on deaf ears to say you should be allocating areas of growing or whatever it wasn't just i wasn't just focused on growing because i was in the community council at the time so the local development plans are very key to all this and they should allocate land for community growing spaces since this is what we're focused on today and it's almost like the community empowerment act that was put in place in 2015 and then that's it until now perhaps the thing to look at is to have somebody doing two or three days a week from the Scottish Government involved with all the local authorities and saying right what's your strategy let's talk about it let's get something in place let's get something done and get those people who are empowered to do it the forum responded to the npf for consultation it almost killed us the word i don't mean to appear critical richard but the word should appear too many times should isn't good enough that's too gray must safeguard we've had that debate quite a few times so on a few issues so another you might also look at uh there are um Aberdeen City Council where a former colleague of mine who is a who is a planner but gets uh food provision and green space provision uh was involved in supporting their local development plan and very key in making sure that food growing spaces was in the local development plan we need as a sector we need we know we've met we know we've needed this the the the recipe for success report highlighted how planning was an issue and yet here we are 10 years down the line and we are still talking about how we need to bring planners on board this is the whole with chicken and egg planners need to be you know on board we need to get onto this but it's it's been a resource issue so we know at a forum level the one of the things we would like to be able to do would be to be able to support local authority local authorities with imminent local development plans coming to make sure that we support them to look at actually getting the food you know adequate models the appropriate models or appropriate land because who knows what models will be required but appropriate land safeguarded so we know that we know we need to do it but it's been a resource issue and it's been an image problem as i think i've kind of made quite clear um you had something else on volunteering yeah i mean i'm conscious of the time i think i can you picked up what we've got i mean i know i think i can you touch on what the barriers are what we need to do to try and support that so i'm quite comfortable at this stage i'm conscious of the time as well but i've picked up some really strong messages just and and the response is here once these things become mainstream and people expect them we don't need a fence around the piece of ground do we yeah that that's very true absolutely i just wanted to actually so this has been a very rich conversation i think definitely paul and and the rest of us have got gained a lot from this but lu you you refer to our sector and and i think you've kind of said what our sector is but i would love it if you could just kind of encapsulate when you say our sector what are you imagining i'm talking about anybody who wants to engage with green space in their local community in a positive in a positive way obviously food growing is an enormous part of what our sector does i think we arrived as a sector um you know kind of felt emboldened to use the term sector when covid struck and i spent a huge amount of time talking to civil servants about um how we could get people how we could get people out onto their allotments and community growing spaces because it was what was required and the risk far outweighed the benefits and advocating for the sector generally and this this is the role of the forum we act as we try to but we're we're voluntary we try to act as a conduit between the grassroots and government because we have amazing we have amazing policy what we need is action we don't need any more policy we need action we need to collaborate we need to plan and we need to think really carefully about the opportunity and the risks if we don't take action now our time has come i mean we we've all been at the table for many many years and it's it does certainly even career wise for me it feels like now or no or never you know um and we would like to do that in partnership it needs to be done with the partnership and a lot of it needs to come from the top um but we need to have conversations and work collaboratively to do that and take the politics out of it thank you very much for that that was great i mean i just really struck me when you because i've been in a community growing movement for a long time myself and when you called it this you know set our sectors oh wow where did that come from so that's really great to hear where it where it emerged another another benefit from from our challenging time of the pandemic so i'd like to thank you all for a really rich discussion this morning and as that's the last public item in our agenda for today i now close the public meeting