 Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting in 2022 of the local government, housing and planning committee. Please note that we've received apologies for Willie Coffey, Annie Wells and Mark Griffin, and I would ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are on sudden 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 second of three evidence sessions that the committee is holding during its current inquiry. We'll be discussing this topic today with two panels of witnesses representing local authorities together with the Association for Public Service Excellence, known as APSI. Our first panel that we're hearing from is Peter Duncan, who's the Allotments Officer at Fife Council. Paul O'Brien, who's the Chief Executive of the Association for Public Service Excellence, APSI, and Wayne Priestley, who's the Principal Advisor also from APSI. We'll also be hearing from Ian Woolard, who's the Allotments Officer from Edinburgh City Council. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. Paul O'Brien and Wayne Priestley are both joining us remotely today. It would be helpful if members could direct their questions to a specific witness where possible, although I'll be happy to bring others in if they wish to contribute. If witnesses do wish to comment, please indicate your desire to do so to me or the clerk. I'll bring you in at an appropriate point. I'd be grateful if Paul O'Brien and Wayne could indicate that you wish to come in by putting an R in the chat function in the blue jeans. I'll now open the session with questions from members and I'm going to get things started. I'm going to direct this to Peter O'Brien and Paul O'Brien. I'm interested to hear how much it costs to provide allotments and how have council budgets for allotments and community-growing changed since the act was passed in 2015? The cost for allotments in Fife depends on the area of land that we're looking at and what surrounds that land. If it's already fenced and so forth, that's a major expenditure. It might be an existing wall garden, which we've got in Fife. On an average, to provide in Fife a plot for a grower provided with a six-before shed that keeps the poor and people happy and keeps the window frames and the doors out of the equation, so it keeps it a bit tidier. That cost in the region pre-Covid was in the regions £1,000 per plot. That was an introduction to the contribution of defensing and communal resources and the shed made up £400 of that. That had a water collection system on it as well, so obviously that's got a knock-on effect on the future maintenance bills. However, post Covid, we could bet anything between £1,500 and £2,000 for the same facility and that is crippling the projects of the present time. In Fife, you provide a shed for people? Yes, what we do in Fife is that we had a discussion with planning officers. The biggest fear from elected members, and I go back 11 or 12 years ago, was that we weren't building any more shanty towns and that was their word. To satisfy planning, because some of our sites are within list B structures and so forth, that if we provided the shed, that provided some continuity of structures across the site. Equally, more importantly, it was a social leveler because everybody that could come along would have a wee shot at horticulture and obviously the biggest expenditure there would be the shed. What we'd have is a three-steer price structure in Fife, so per square metre, it's 45 pence a square metre and that encodes your shed. The basics of it allows us over a five-year period to refilt and maintain that building with the extra income because the average cost is 30 pence a square metre in Fife for a site without that individual shed. Thanks for that clarity. Paul, have you got a bigger picture sense on the cost of allotments? Yes, thanks, chair. Sorry, convener. What our figures are telling us at a UK-wide level and we've monitored this over the last 15 years or so through one survey and worked with local authorities across the UK, the most common price for a 250-square metre plot is around £70 per annum. What the figures are showing us is that over 50 per cent of authorities are charging over £50 a plot per annum now. The other thing that we are seeing as well as in terms of costs is the on-going rising costs, cost of living generally, I suppose, impact on inflation, et cetera, but we are seeing local authorities suggesting that over 40 per cent of them are suggesting that they intend increasing costs on on-going basis over the next two to five years. Another 32 per cent are looking at reviewing those costs at present, so quite a substantial amount of those authorities looking to increase costs. That's as a result of budgets continuing to tighten at a local authority level and the ability to subsidise plots on on-going basis diminishing. We've seen a long-term trend of a shift towards trying to break even on the provision of plots. I might have missed something there. The £50 per plot per annum is a charge to the plot holder. Does that money go back into the provision of new allotments? One of the issues that we are beginning to understand is that there are long waiting lists and not enough plots. What is the cost to provide allotments? The cost for the maintenance and upkeep of the plots. We are also seeing, as you have rightly pointed out, an increase in demand for plots. Local authorities responding to that by trying to increase the number of plots available. That sometimes is about repackaging the smaller plots and cutting them up in different ways. We are also trying to find additional land to create further plots. The cost that we are talking about is the cost to maintain those plots and allotments. We do not have any clarity around a budget for creating new allotments. There are limited budgets that authorities have available for those allotments. We are not making surplus, if you like, from the upkeep costs. We are trying to break even the subsidising costs. New plots sometimes come from developers as well. New housing developments, etc. There is evidence around that. That suggests that there is a further way of providing new plots. Local authorities are looking to repark this land and increase the number of plots available. We have seen some evidence that, although there is an increase in demand, the waiting lists are starting to diminish just a little bit and are starting to improve. It is not as long-await. That is right across the board. We are not talking about individual authorities here. We are talking about the increasing demand that the waiting time seems to be reducing just a bit. Iain, you want to come in. Yes. The costs of the plots in Edinburgh are probably a little bit higher just now. I am going on the assumption of the proposed extension at Victoria Park. That is 16 plots and a few raised beds. That is just over £50,000. We could be looking about as high as £3,000 per plot for that location. There are different locations in different areas of the city. We charge a little bit more extra for the plots in Edinburgh. The proposed fees for next year are £138.50 for a full plot. That is probably quite expensive. It could be the most expensive in Scotland. I would not say that the diminishing is certainly increasing, especially here in Edinburgh anyway. It is not showing any signs that are going away at all. That is £130.50. Is that more than is needed? You use that for maintaining. Is there anything there that you can put towards new plots? Probably any new plots are coming from capital money. The council is going to incur a debt long-term on that cost. The problem in Edinburgh is that the income that we can generate from allotments is just over £100,000. As a one-man service, we probably break just about even on the revenue costs in the day-to-day running. That is probably quite pleasing to my bosses. OK. I have just heard Wayne. You would like to come in as well. Yes, thank you. Just a point on the cost of allotment plots and what people charge per allotment plot. It often depends on the facilities that are on the site. You can have an absolute blueprint site that has water, electricity, all the facilities on the community huts, composting toilets, you name it. You can have a five-star allotment plot, but a lot of the sites are quite small sites. That £70 average that we have seen in ours can reflect a site that is basically just a plot of land and nothing else. That is why you get such variation. I understand that with the Edinburgh one that probably is a premium site. I would think that there were surprises with lots of those facilities on it. Interestingly from our report, what it is showing is that 50 per cent of local authorities are subsidising the cost of allotments. Probably about 45 per cent are just about breaking even. There isn't any money in providing allotments if very much falls down to do the council to have the resources available to do it. A lot of councils now are saying that we cannot afford new sites, so what we will do is look at the size of the existing plots that we have. We will consider halving them, quartering them. We are desperate for sites. We need more plots. Can we have some of your plots back? Historically, people have had two, three or four plots. We are looking at digging some of the paths up in some cases or reducing the size of the compost storage area to get new plots in. There are all sorts of ways that we are looking to try to keep the cost of providing more allotments down by utilising what they currently have. A lot of the new plots are smaller. It is because the families are coming on to them and saying, we do not want massive football pitch size plots. We just want enough to feel that we are getting a healthy lifestyle involving the children, getting some homegrown products. They do not always have to be new sites. That is probably what we are seeing from our results. Thank you very much for that. You started to touch into an area that you wanted to explore a little bit about the main barriers. I think that we are beginning to pull that out. Clearly, allotments provide a lot of benefit for people, not just food. Last week in our last session, we touched on the mental health and wellbeing aspects of it. It is coming out already in the conversation this morning that barriers are around cost. It seems to be the main barrier. Is identifying sites also an issue? I think that, with regard to the sites, it is getting better, the recognition. From a local authority perspective, I think that it is about the senior officers within other departments within the council recognising what the importance of community growing is and what it brings to the table, especially through the last two years that we have had and the importance of that. I think that, based on what Wain was saying there with regard to the realignment of things, we have to be very careful that we do not go into a chopping-up exercise and we are left with postage stamps. In Fife, we operate three sizes, which allows people to go up the way or down the way internally, if they are so wish, if their circumstances change. Equally, the biggest hurdle that we have is people not knowing what to do. In the act, it is a bit mentioned about training. That is something that flies under the radar with everybody. They are all very good at creating these kitchens for cooking stuff, but if you cannot grow it, you cannot cook it, so that is silly at work. Absolutely, that is a very good point. I wanted to clarify around it, so you say three sizes in five. Could you just say a little bit more about that? The recognised size per the act is 250 square metres. However, if I put a hand on heart and I said to you that anything we have at that level or above is probably about 10 per cent of our total supply, we have found that 200 square metres, 100 square metres and even down to 50 square metres is more than suffice if you think about 50 square metres in a single person. That is enough to supplement. You are never going to replace the food chain, you are going to supplement the food chain. That is enough for them to manage. I think that the biggest hurdle we have found as well is that people coming in have got to build up their cultural skills but also their time management because the weeds do not stop, which gives Ian and I a sore head with a disciplinary side. I think that it is about not being too prescriptive. I tend to look at our sites as they are bespoke per the community so that we can get the community bought in. The important thing that we have mentioned is that we have touched slightly about waiting lists. I am a great believer that we are about to embark on cleansing our waiting list because it was mentioned there about the peak going back. It certainly did peak. I think that Ian would agree with me here at the start of Covid. Everybody thought that they would have a grown space and I have now called my waiting list expressions of interest because when we go back and some of our sites are at that level, the people who have moved on have found something else to do. I think that we are a wise move to analyse what our demand is. By the end of this year, we will be in a position to do that. We find that the three sizes work well. As people get older and the family moves off, they could downgrade or other circumstances prevail as well. I think that we have to take all that into account. That is a really good point. We heard last week from Lou Evans who talked about having starter plots for people as well so that people are not overwhelmed by a single... What is it? The 250 square metres is equivalent to a tennis court or something? Like singles tennis court, which can be quite a lot if you do not have horticultural skills. What we find is that I look upon the whole thing as stepping stone so that it covers allotments. However, everything from the floral enhancement on the corner of the street to the community garden to the allotment site is all important because it is gaining people's confidence and working outdoors and they might decide to get off the bus at the community garden stage and find that they are committing enough time as it is and they are getting enough surplus produce from that. Equally, we have got into the mix, we have got a lot... Between beside the allotments, we have got orchards and things chucked into the equation as well. Now we have got people looking at the next stage up from allotments so effectively crofting in a sense or small holding sort of size, community growing in a different way. All brings different permutations to the table financially for the authority and how we are going to deliver that. Absolutely. Exciting times for local growing in all kinds of manners and we have got the good food nation bill, which is another piece that we have got to put together with all of the local food strategies. Wayne, I think that you wanted to come in on this. Yes, it is very much... Peter has covered a lot of what I was going to say but I think he is right. I think the critical point to allotments is the education of people when they are taking on an allotment. What we are actually finding is, and I agree with Peter again about not cutting them up into small pieces just for the sake of it, but what we are finding is some of these larger plots, a good percentage of the area is uncultivated because people just haven't got the time or the horticultural skills to completely use that plot totally. There are reasons why they are being reduced and a lot of people are saying they do want to try it out and see how it works because time is the essence. You have got to put the timing to make the allotment work and with there being such huge waiting lists, we don't want people playing around with allotments if they are not going to take it seriously. I was just backing up on what Peter was saying. Thanks very much and I think Paul wanted to come in as well. To reiterate those points about the challenges, about availability of land, availability of green space, engagement about security is another issue in that increase in demand. I wanted to make a point about the uncultivated land and to say that that is not allowed by local authorities to continue for too long. The evidence that we have got is almost 80 per cent of taking action within three months at the latest if plots remain uncultivated. That is not dracorian in any way. It is just the reality that there is a staged process. We encourage people, first of all, if they have got the plot to cultivate the land and if they are not doing that, then once it starts to hit the three-month point, the trigger points start to ratchet up to encourage them to use the land or hand it back. That is very helpful. Do you want to come in, Ian? I do try something quite unique here in Edinburgh. Generally, when people have been waiting so long on their allotments to finally get their plot, I make it a point to actually meet in every one of these new plot holders. Why I do that is first of all to show them the plot. Some people, if they have not had an allotment before and it is new to them, can either be quite surprised how big a plot is or how small it is. I make it a point to actually meet them as they go through the rules and regulations with them. I will say to them, is this plot size okay for you? I feel that it is quite important to do that because they know in their mind how much they are going to do that plot. Of course, if they cannot do the plot, I will soon find out when I do my site visits at this time of the year as the plots are starting to get a little bit grassed over and things like that. That is when the emails start and the letters start and then sometimes we are into conflicts which is always an interesting part of this job. I am always trying different strategies to make it work, but that is certainly to do with generally probably about 100 plots a year, change hands. Most of the new plots that come in are quite successful because they have actually seen what they are actually getting. That is my experience anyway. That is great. I think that it is really important to do that kind of hand holding and an initial introduction understanding where people are at. I am going to guess what is coming up in general is maybe we need to think more about that kind of start plot. It is clearly a desire in people to grow, to put seeds in the ground and grow food and have that connection. We need to look at it another way, but I think that we have that coming through the community garden movement as well. I just wanted to touch on two things and then I am going to bring in colleagues for other questions. One is Peter, you were mentioning when we started to talk about barriers, you were saying that you were actually finding that barriers are coming down in terms of colleagues within the local authority recognising the importance of allotments. Which departments do you think are the allies in terms of allotment coming to fruition? Surprisingly enough, Estates is quite keen to work with us. What we are doing is we are repurposing our existing assets. For example, if we have a green desert and that has cost the next amount of pounds to cut the green desert, what we are looking at is turning that into community growing space. Yes, we have a capital expenditure on the asset. However, as the rent structure sits at the present time, I say that tongue in cheek because the prices are always going up, but that is covering, as was mentioned earlier, the on-going costs, i.e. because we still have to pay for commercial rates for water. We have a legal obligation to control potato whites, so if we have potato whites in sight, it involves putting a skip in to take that away, and green waste and such. In the main, if we are repurposing sites, if you think about it, we are taking the maintenance cost as a saving. We are maybe spending one site of springs to mingles and glenithus £1,400 a year to cut the grass with no purpose, except for motorcycles and things like that. £70,000 to create a site, and we have an income of £3,500 per annum coming in from that site. We have still got the crown jewels, but the knock-on effect for the community is tenfold, because if we have got 50 plot holders on a site, I think that it could work roughly about 25 to 30 per cent if other people are affected by that site in a good way, whether we are getting fresh produce from that site, and it is the next door neighbour, we are getting half a cabbage or whatever it may be, so that is the benefits of the whole project in my mind, and then we have obviously the social inclusion and so forth as well. That is where I think that when we are doing a survey, we are going to be asking questions such as ok, you are on a long waiting list, however would you like to engage with a local community growing group in the meantime, because if you think about Scotland-wide, a lot of men waiting lists is the only horticultural list that exists, and so it is a bit of a bucket for everybody's interests, and so if we could filter that and we could keep these people sitting on the waiting list for five, six years, and we could keep their interests moving, and then eventually they might decide that's enough for them and they'll just move on or they'll hang in there, but equally what we're doing is we're providing support to the community groups because that's a thing that's being recognised in Fife as well, that we've got over 60 communities involved in floral enhancements and stuff, however that stopped because of Covid, and the thing with that was that there wasn't the recognition how important that was, so we're looking at kicking that back into action again, so basically, as I said earlier, it's not just about the statutory bit, it's about the boat on bits round about it, that where woo and car and and so forth come from with Grow Green Scotland and so forth. Absolutely, that's very interesting. Ian, I just wonder if you've got any thoughts, so Peter's identified estates as being a useful department that's come online and recognised the importance of allotments. In Edinburgh, are there any other departments that... Yes, planning has been quite helpful. Certainly, I'm just reflecting on our planning game that we've got at New Creek Hall. That was Barrett's homes that built many family homes out just at New Creek Hall there and we managed as a planning game to get a 26-plot site off them free of charge, which was nice. Obviously, that's benefitting the local community there as well. On top of that, we're at this moment doing an extension of the leaf links just behind the existing leaf links, the rope works there and S1 homes have created a very nice 16-plot extension by the time I split it down in the middle. I think I spent a little bit more money on that site than they were envisaging, but it keeps us happy and it keeps the plot owners happy. In terms of what we're also looking at as well is bowling greens in Edinburgh, which are maybe not being used at the moment and that seems to be a potential growth area for us, but some of that is slightly complicated because of the common good element on it. Fingers crossed we can get over that and in the next number of years we'll see a number of bowling greens turned into lotments. That's a really great idea for repurposing and they've already got fences or hedges around them so you don't have to worry about that and probably also facilities. I'm going to move on and just ask a question around so maybe this is to Paul or Wayne from Apsi, do you have any understanding if councils actually measure the benefit of allotments or other community growing provisions and track the impact on other policy areas? Wayne, you look like you want to come in. I'm not aware of anybody that actually tracks in a measurable manner the impact it's having but what I think is interesting is a lot of local authorities are now right in the provision of allotments into local plans, health and wellbeing strategies and as you were mentioning there before, biodiversity strategies, climate change, sustainable urban drainage is being built into some allotment plots and it's this whole thing about the multiplicity of benefits that allotments bring and I think the other thing as well about partners is I certainly developed quite a large allotment site in Southwood in Greater Manchester through the help of the health providers and they were very keen from the point of view that they see it as a front end way to sort of improve health and wellbeing better food the other option is things like the police for anti-social behaviour because you get a lot of intergenerational work going on allotment and you will find that there are many partners who are willing to help develop allotment plots but as to actually anybody measuring it I'm not aware of that but it's something we could certainly try to find out Thanks for that. I think it would be good to start measuring and really understanding how important allotments or community growing spaces are. Let's move on on to another theme which is around the impact of allotment and maybe the act on allotment demand and provision but maybe we've covered some of that I'm going to bring in Miles Briggs. Thanks, convener, good morning to the panel thanks for joining us today I wanted to specifically ask a few questions with regards to part 9 and how you think that's made a difference and maybe start by asking the number of plots and sites has changed over the last seven years you've already touched upon some of the splitting which has taken place we've heard already from witnesses around some of the assessment of waiting lists talking about a third, a third, a third and just wondered how part 9 has actually meant things have changed on the ground and maybe start with yourself Peter and if anyone else wants to come in Well part 9 Ian, myself and Sandy has been heavily involved for a long, long time We are the doers if you know what I mean but I could see from the Scotland perspective I could see where the rest of the other authorities are starting to waking up and going away back many, many years ago there was quite a few people engaged at the start but then it started to wane off for quite a bit and really you were left with maybe four or five local authorities that were still actively wanting to engage waiting up to that and especially after 2015 heading into the secondary guidance stuff that was brought together that was a bit protracted and obviously we know that came in March 18 and I think out there on the front line the cold faces will call it I think there was a lot of third sector organisations seeing the act as a possible opportunity for to get the big stick out and bash the local authorities and I think that mindset still sets there to an extent and there's not what I would say a full understanding of the impacts that we've got financially and otherwise staff and resources and whatever else within the authorities in 2009 when I came into post we were sitting with 13 sites and now 39 sites so there's not one of me and a wee bit in recognition needs to go and I think the acts helped that within the internal management structures within the councils it's not got there yet by any means there's still distinct lack of staff and resources as Ian said there earlier about you still need that personal touch it's people were dealing with here it's no tins of beans or anything and I think we've also got to take into account that our client base has changed a lot in the last 10 years we've got a lot more women children so there's been the need for to have a change in facilities as well not all our sites but the majority of our sites have got toilets and so forth and maybe a meeting room and so forth like that so yes there's benefits came out of it but for the uneducated not knowing what's going on within the local authorities that's what the problem is is they're reading what the act says the secondary guidance says but there's no on the cold face understanding the problems that Ian and I's got on a day to day basis whether it be aggressing or whatever because there's a weird and wonderful bunch of it called allotment holders and some we'll say tongue in cheek again with the cultivation side of it we've been challenged, we've been in the court about people with no dig policies and wanting to grow dandelions and stuff like this everybody's got their own opinion of what they want to do and I think we can't be too prescriptive on it but equally from a local authority perspective we've still got to have the rules and regulations to be in with what Weagle says and what Blannan says and whatever else but yes, as I say there's been good bits, there's bad bits there's some misunderstanding of the act especially with the surrounding waiting lists which I get that quite regular why we've not done anything about the waiting lists well, with the thresholds well, there's a honeymoon period there it was built in for the local authorities to be honest to you that maybe needs to get seriously looked at because of the desire now that human beings were to go outside into green space and to grow so are we going to manage to meet these probably not and whether it be financial or otherwise and it's something that's maybe an opportune moment with a review going on is to actually look at that you want to say in a minute about that again well, I have a hard to talk about that what you said Peter, you know certainly I was saying my 30 years of managing allotments for the city council I've seen quite a few changes I think when I started in 1992 I think we're only 70 and 18 sites so now we're up to 32 as in 2020 but I would say probably like Peter we've embarked on quite a big new allotment sites certainly it's in Edinburgh since 2011 we built many maybe to bear in mind is that they're not the big sites we already have such as in belief these new sites are fairly small ones obviously if we're to do a site such as in belief you're looking at across the hundreds of thousands and that's going to be a debt that the council's going to incur for many years to come but yeah it's been an interesting job I'm always keen to try and also looking for new sites and how to better manage the existing stock we've got but as Peter says it's always full of challenges thank you for that I wanted to touch on this already in the sense of how the act has been interpreted by local authorities now obviously you two are the living in bodyment of the councils you are working in for around allotments but we know for example in Highland council they do not run or allocate sites despite having large waiting lists for private sites in the Inverness area so you touched upon Peter that honeymoon period has that prevented people in local authorities to act on this needing to think about the waiting lists which are built up because they've seen this as something coming rather than something they had to do something about now I know that I've spoken to various local authorities for advice I think what's happened is there's been a lot of staffing changes within these local authorities and there has been a lot of change I mean we're probably with Sandy and myself and Ian's probably with the die-harding among them but what I found was that usually if the phone goes or I get an email, I want advice on tenancy agreements or whatever some of them come through our estates department, they're directed at us and wondering how they work with leases and things and Murray council was one of them but I think we've also got people who are I wouldn't say the views that is an excuse we'll put it that way I think that what we've got is we've got a lot of officers being put into positions without the experience that's sitting behind them and the lack of support and it comes into to be quite frank about it, it comes right back to this building because if you phoned up today and got an answer from Ian or Peter they'll help you so it needs to be a go-to for these people and some of them are writing at the deep end and Nicolae they've got third sector groups biting at their backs saying you must provide this, you must do that you must do the next thing and quoting every piece of the art possible but the poor individual doesn't have that backbone and that's where they're possibly coming back to Ian or myself for a bit advice and I don't mind doing that I mean I don't want to be seen anybody falter with the thing but that person tends to be the one individual within the authority and it's about them getting their authority officers to start thinking along the same lines as possibly Ian's does or I do so there's a whole we went on about education and horticulture never mind that, there's the education side of it sitting within the authority structure so I think to me the act arrived on the doorstep didn't make a big difference to me really because we were involved in it that much and we knew what was coming in the sense but for someone picking it up green on day one it's quite a daunting thing to say well what about this and what about that and as I say there's some organisations out there and some plot holders who are sort of keen to just keep pushing and pushing and pushing without actually just taking time it takes me about three years by the time of inception to delivery on the ground because there's no sense in delivering an allotment site in the middle of July for example nobody wants it you better time in it so that they're getting ready for the start of the grown season so going right back to your question I think that it would be good if the Government could facilitate some sort of support to the local authorities officers whether it be through the tri-party working group that we've already discussed that Ian and Sandy and I sit on and try and just be there for the one-stop shop or it's administer through apps or something like that direction so hopefully that answers Does anyone else want to come in on that or I think we've covered quite a lot of points there I wanted to just finally ask with regards to and you touched upon this as well with individuals who potentially don't want a full size allotment but want to start growing and community growing especially and just wondered how that has been assessed to look at demand especially coming out of the pandemic when I think people did want that space and how a different model maybe is needed we've seen on some of the visits we've done raised beds being provided for people or just a small space to see whether or not you're going to be sustainably able to manage a site maybe something which could be developed on new sites to really allow that community to develop of people who would all be in the same position of trying to start out we are a survey that we've done during Covid if anything good came out of Covid we managed to change our IT systems so that we could now contact everybody on our waiting lists that's always been a big hurdle for local authorities in the past so we're now able to contact the 1,800 people who've got sitting on the list and we intend to start for a first stage survey to ask them what they want so we could zone that downright back into post codes and into communities so if it was Dr Muhty for example there was a desire in Dr Muhty for community garden and an orchard that's the road we go so we're basically providing the community what the community's desires are rather than just working on so well in the set area there's demand at present time we only know that demand because of the existing sites and their waiting lists but these existing sites it could be anybody on that waiting list from wherever and sometimes people put their names on multiple lists which gives you a wee bit of false figures as well so I think going forward our method of delivery is obviously very much community led and officers supported and the initial survey allows us to do that then from the people who identify that allotments is number one for them they will then be further surveyed along with the existing pot holders which will then shape our new allotment strategy which is coming in 2023-24 OK Good to add to that certainly in Edinburgh we certainly know where our demand is which is the EH564 9 and 10 massive waiting lists certainly at the moment our waiting lists is currently I was trying to look at the other day there was about 5600 2019 we had 3,000 people on that list so as we were the clients of the waiting list we asked people to validate if they wanted an allotment so that took it down to 1,290 now obviously I don't think anybody has seen the pandemic coming and that's gone back up to over 5,500 but my concern is obviously Edinburgh lands definitely a premium 8,6 not much land really in the leaf for new plots 9 and 10 more inside but it's a challenge there's no question about it but how do we get that land where we can actually put new sites on but it's always been my concern thank you thank you thanks Miles I'm now going to bring in Maree MacNeill thank you panel, it's great to see you this morning my first question really was covered about more joined up approach to the provision of growing species but just going back on Ian's point there then how often do you review your waiting lists within Edinburgh the last time reviewed it was March 2019 so we're probably coming up for review again so obviously the quickest way to do that will be to contact those in the waiting list by email because as Pete probably says how many people did apply for a lot of misdunit pandemic thinking that this is a nice thing to do but yeah it's a bit of a worry of the waiting list and how it keeps rising because we've got an online process as well it makes it much easier for people pre-online people had to do it all fashion way they had to phone me up and then send out an application form so that kind of held it about 350 a year now if I look at the figures from last year that's about 1,300 people applied so whenever we make it slightly easier for people they always take the easy route what about yourself Peter when do you review it at an annual basis or no unfortunately not on a quarter way basis we're challenged with putting reports back on a quarter way performance figures back on a quarter way basis for plot allocation and the waiting list so every quarter I've got to justify what we're doing why they went up and what we're doing to do it which works in my favour eventually because it's given the elected members a good picture of what's going on and senior management we're saying well we have got a client here but what we've found is as I said we've mentioned this new system we've found that we could go into that and we could pick out the duplications as well which as Ian says is quite easy just to just tick the box and fill it in and I think that's where it's going to be an interesting exercise when we go through what we're going to go through just shortly and the last time we did that was about two years after I came in to post to establish a real demand before I started building sites and we lost over 50% of these people that were on paper lists and whatever but we didn't bin them we put them to the side just so we made sure that if they came back and some of them did come back at a later date but on a quarterly basis it's quite interesting to see how the figures go and equally when you drill down into that it reflects back on employment issues as well for example if we've got a major employer in that area for example in Glynoethys when Tyler Strussell shut the door that had a major impact on what I was waiting for because people at an age who had worked their other days but they were 50-odd year old so they went back into mainstream employment again but they had time on their hands so they wanted an allotment so there was a wee bit to fall out from there so if you keep your eye on the sort of that side of things as well and people sort of tend to miss that a wee bit with things I think Paul wants to come in on this as well I think you as well I'm very impressed My worry is if I suddenly from a selfish point of view if I suddenly contact five and a half thousand people and ask the allotment etc my inbox, my email is going to explode for the next month so all I'm going to be sitting at the desk answering emails because you'll be guaranteed people won't know where am I on the list so we do need to do a validation quite soon How are we going to do that? I'm still trying to figure that out Wanted to come in Yes, just on that point of witness what we are being told by the people we survey of which there's over a hundred and fifty local authorities that we've surveyed on this from across the UK about 90% of them are regularly updating their waiting lists I take that as within an annual basis at the latest that's to remove people who are no longer interested or who've moved away from the area other interests and statistics from it perhaps as well is that 71% of those respondents are saying that they restrict availability of plots to people who live in that local authority area and only 21% these days are allowing plots to be passed on to family members so just a few statistics to hear round about how people manage those waiting lists as well Thanks Are you aware of other parts of the 2015 act being used to enable community growing for allotment purposes for example asset transfer and participation requests Can you give any examples of those in your authorities and I'll go back to Peter and Ian if that's okay We have found that we've had one or two requests about community asset transfers however obviously that has a knock-on effect back to the local authorities so if I was to do a cut transfer and give them the act only applies to a land owned by or leased by the local authority what it means is effectively that is out of the equation for reporting purposes and otherwise so if we put out a site say it was 100 plots all of a sudden I've lost 100 plots in my equation equally in Fife we have got quite a few especially in they'll get a bay or south area there's private sites and the only contact that we have with them we had plenty of contact during Covid with them but prior to that they tend to be just as they say on the tin their private sites to operate their own waiting lists and whatever else at the time there was a great big discussion that went on about the inclusion of private sites into the act and that answer where it ended up was that they weren't included I felt personally they should have been included because if we as a local authority are doing a report back to the Government and we're saying here is the demand in the area and use it or so happened to have in a given area of what private sites it's not a true reflection far from it so that's where we are can't transfer thing I can't say that the groups are overly keen to take that on because there is absolute pitfalls in there we joke about the sort of allotment wars but there are real allotment wars and even where we've got sites that are out on leases the lease is written in such a way that so the individual lease mirrors our direct managed lease except the name has just changed but then that's mirrored into the main lease for the site so the default position really is the council because we own the land and we've had to do it on occasion where the group felt that they couldn't manage because it's too personal because the secretary as usual and the chairmen are also plot holders it's too personal to deal with things and it's got to the stage where the plot holders basically are not doing their plot and how it's written is if their lease goes into default it puts the main lease into default however the group's not then challenged by the council the council like myself stand by the group and bring in our resource i.e. the legal services to deal with it because where's the group going to get that back up and that's the disadvantages of like Seruna community asset transfer out there because what you will end up with is I've probably been on more dark boards than 5 and people could imagine but what you'll end up with is you'll end up with unmanaged, unruly sites and it sounds bad but that's a real hard fact of the matter is when you get strong individuals in there who don't want to play ball then unfortunately there still has to be some sort of rules and regulations that you've got to have and that's where the groups don't have the teeth for to deal with it or the resources and the amount of times that we've had secretaries who've resigned because of the amount of grief that I'm just wanting to come along and do my walkman pot I don't want the grief that goes with it so we've got quite a mixture in Fife where we've got direct managed sites we've got private their own sites and we've got sites that are managed through groups and then we've got least ones as well so hopefully that answers your question a bit I don't have a lot of experience of community asset transfer that's mostly some of my housing colleagues they're doing quite a lot particularly in the land in Edinburgh it's on the housing revenue account most of the sites in Edinburgh are directly managed so I don't have a lot of experience of the community asset transfer I'm sorry Paul, do you want to go in the way adding further to that? Sorry, yeah, it's just probably supporting what Peter said all the evidence we see is that there's an on-going need for committees in place that are managing sites there's a need for on-going subsidy support, GILS help that sort of umbilical cord back to the local authority all of the survey work that we've done over the years was that that's important and it continues to be important in many ways it's increasing you know there's some of the groups that struggle to survive on their own if you like that's me, good enough thanks I'm now going to bring in questions from Paul MacLennan thank you, good morning panel my constituencies loading which has probably got the longest waiting time in the whole of Scotland so it's an interest to myself I think that the previous panel talked about there's a couple, there's a community garden in Dunbaran, there's also an allotment which was kind of done not through the council but kind of private arrangement sort of thing so that there's been a problem with that the question I was going to ask is was talking about waiting with some trigger points and you've kind of touched on some of these already and mentioned about waiting times what you think you've both mentioned I suppose the key thing is could this information be tracked nationally and probably the first point in that regard because the second part of that question is really talking about benchmarking in terms of where councils are now no, it's not apples for apples and whatever but I just wonder if you want to comment on that in particular in regards to the information being tracked nationally I mean can you assess where you are in terms of other local authorities for example and is that a useful exercise if that's the case? Do you know what a useful exercise I'd love to know where Edinburgh stands compared to the rest of the country waiting list ones I imagine I imagine some of the London boroughs would have huge waiting lists as well any kind of built up area, built up cities got a big waiting list for me it would be a great benchmark to have and it would be useful to see where the demand is I'm sure there must be some local authorities out there where the waiting list is quite low I think I remember years ago when Peter and I used to have all these meetings where the various local authorities I think it was about four years ago when Clackmannanshire had about 16 people on the waiting list so it's quite a it's probably quite a varied varied varied around the country so it would be interesting very interesting actually Peter I don't know if you want to comment on that and I think probably from the point of apse is the benchmark in comparison with the different types of councils as well and the different size of councils I think we at the Tripartite Working Group that Tracy heads up that's been on to go for a long time and what was discussed there was was that we've got in Scotland we've got local authorities with different requirements so we've got to take into account what their geographic is so we've got the smaller local authorities with smaller areas we've got Fife which has got Fishing in One and Mining in the sort of west and Fishing in the East and then sort of Newtown in the middle and what we looked at was a possibility of kind of problem solving was looking at matching local authorities in so Highlands and Borders maybe and Highlands and Dumfries and Galloway so they've got very similar problems with sort of remote settlements that might require different things and if you go back to that it says about provision of five miles radius or half an hour on public transport or whatever it is however you can imagine trying to apply that in the Highlands and the same during Dumfries and Galloway or the Borders is such and I think where we were thinking was that it was like a buddy kind of system which probably could be a potential answer to a lot of the questions that you've got in your mind and I think from my point of view I think that there's no sense in another authority falling down the hole that once fell down before so let's not reinvent wheels here and everybody's there to for the same purposes to grow food for social inclusion whatever else it may be and I think where we are is I think that paper works fine but the practical know-how and the sort of well didn't worry about that that'll be okay that's what's required there's a steady in hand on the shoulder in a sense to people out there in the private sector who have looked at the provision of growing space attached to the names of attached to the garden centres and things like that and charts and extorts and rates for them I think what we've also got to bear in mind there is and it goes back to the most important thing is its affordability for all so if we're looking at our all the sort of people who live in Fife well everybody should be on the level playing field for accessibility to that and sometimes in Fife we've got imbalance where we've got severe deprivation balanced against sort of St Andrew's is a good example where we have severe deprivation in one part of St Andrew's and very affluent in the other and neither will mix but what I'm saying to them as well as an officer I'll treat everybody the same we're on the same page here and I think that's what we've also got to be careful of we don't make things if we're looking at any change we help the local authorities to administer that yourselves do that and we then in turn could support the group so as I said there's been a lot of discussion going on in the tripartite group what could happen would happen financially so that the groups if they want to start up a growing site gets a financial sort of start-up grant or a seed grant I was going to bring in Paul Distan a policy note in your head a couple of times obviously about the benchmarking part and we've heard of the advantages of that I just wonder if you want to comment on that briefly as well on the point that we're seeing Thanks very much we collect data across 17 services but we tend to collect the allotments side of it in with our parks and grounds maintenance data at present perhaps that's something we need to revisit as well we look at cost quality productivity customer satisfaction etc because you need to look at things in the round a lot of the points that Peter was making there as well but we do that in the basis of family groups as well so that you're comparing like with like Marking isn't just to have a league table it's so that you have identifiable data so that you can compare that data between each other in order that you can get in behind that data and see what some people are doing better than you or why some people are doing worse than you and you share that information that's something that we are happy to revisit and expand about as well because I think this is obviously an area that is really expanding I mean the 2015 act has had a significant impact in Scotland for the reasons we've already heard about there's a much longer term trend there as well going about and awakening of people going about biodiversity climate change healthy lifestyle social cohesion all of those things that we hear and there's a growing need for information and data in this area that's something we'll be looking at again Paul, thank you for that the next time I want to touch on was on the waiting lists and I suppose there's a couple of things that you've kind of touched on that one was around about people remaining on the waiting list for more than five years because obviously there's part of the act provisioning everyone to be talking about that and how we tackle that and you've kind of touched on that and just if there's anything else you want to add on that and the second one obviously was around about communication with those in the waiting list for example what can be done to help them look at new sites Paul, become yourself again first of all just in terms of that about waiting lists around about as I said more than five years and what the communication is you've both kind of touched on that and there's anything else you wanted to add on that the waiting list is that's all that's been my main concern I'll take for example some of the plots I've been giving away recently in Billy's Ferry Road most of the people applied to join the Edinburgh waiting list in 2008-2009 and even after all these years they're still very keen because what will do every so often there's all kind of trickle feed that are you still interested in maybe the top 20 just to make sure the good reason why I do that is just to make sure I know when a plot comes up I can fill it straight away because you don't want plots at this time of year lying about for too long quite quickly how is all that I don't know I mean some of you are waiting lists in Edinburgh some of the news sites I'll meet the five-year deadline quite easily but one's like you know the mid-Mars, the Edinburgh Leafs the Ferry Roads, the Warrisons the people are still extremely keen to get a plot after all these years and I suppose my concern is how do you make plots available I'm always splitting plots when they come up but the thing is what you can imagine is you know people have waited so long on their plot they're going to put quite a bit they're going to put an awful lot of investment into that plot and for a lot of these people they're going to be there a long time before they you know if it comes available and of course that's just the way I look at it it's a bit like a dam so the five-year one I've always been concerned about that if I have to be honest No, I think as far as I'm concerned I think that we have peaked recently as I said just because of what we've been through as a country in the last two years however I think in a fife perspective it's very much there's quite an imbalance between some sites and others where we could have immediate availability on one whereas the other one's got 80 odd folk or 100 folk or whatever it may be sitting on it and I think that what I mentioned earlier about this survey I think that will help filter people's wishes and see what they're wanting to do and as I said earlier that's waiting lists for their allotments is the only kind of thing that's in a lot of authorities is what's there I think that going to to the future I think that the communities have got to come forward themselves and tell us what they want and in some of the ways we'll be the facilitator of the bit land facilitator potential might be funding or might be externals what external money are there that we can access now but they can but the fact that it's starting from zero is a bit of difficulty and that's what I was touching on earlier is there a potential for having a sort of swash fund that the council could administer you must be reading my mind because again that's the next question and I'll can you move on to that because one was talking about community growth projects and allotments associations about getting access to funding in terms of that who are the big funders and what sort of the Scottish Government and I suppose the other thing is well just on support was around about part nine if there was any thoughts you had on the support from the Scottish Government in terms of part nine of the legislation so again it's talking about the funding what support is there from funders and also as around the else that the Scottish Government could do in terms of just that broader support that has always been my question for day one but who's got the money to pay for it and even though you could look at cocktails of funding the difficult thing for a group to do is to get the initial funds and then they could start a match funding thereafter and as I said excuse the pun but a seed cord and grant if you called it that wouldn't be a bad thing and that's something that I feel that the Scottish Government could bring to the table to and it's something that the local authority then has control over and considering the act applies to land owned or leased by the local authority it's known as though the money is going outside on to privately owned land and that would certainly allow a different approach to be taken and allow the groups to take forward at their speed because that's my interview with it now is you know the days off when the local authority has imposed things upon the communities i play parks or allotments sites or whatever they've gone and so and thanks to the community permanent it's quite clear with states where we need to be and that's changed the mindsets taken these last seven years where they start turning not just on sex part nine but because it all links together and I think that's something we spoke about earlier is there's a link right across the board whether it be car transfers or whatever it may be so I think my biggest hurdle is the two things is the waiting list thresholds and the second thing is the funding side of it I know we've kind of both touched on that but I think Peter's probably something very well indeed is funding the big issue of course the land for us here in Edinburgh is a big issue even though we are looking at various pockets of land we could potentially develop into allotments we still need the funding for that and the way things are going these days is certainly from internal budgets of the various councils so I kind of fight for what we need 100,000 for new allotments or that new school it's needed and that's going to take present over the potential of new allotments that's mean OK so Paul just wanted to come in on this and then I'm a bit mindful of time so we're going to move on Thanks convener I'll keep it brief then just to say an experience in England that a similar Government here came forward with pocket parks initiatives one-off funding for the development of pockets of land for parks purposes one of the big issues with that as Peter has highlighted there is on-going cost revenue cost as well it's OK given that one-off capital cost to develop a bit of land but there can be the on-going maintenance cost that we then need to find as well so it's important that any initiatives like that that did come forward with one-off funding is thought through that there will be a maintenance element of that as well on an on-going basis Thanks very much for that so we're going to move on to touch a little bit on local food growing strategies and I'm going to probably put these questions mainly to Ian and Peter so I'm just curious to know to what extent you've been involved in the development of local food strategies both in Edinburgh and Fife and to yeah don't leave it at that, yeah, Ian Some of my colleagues in the various strategy groups they're more involved in the food growing strategy than myself feeling the cloud is mostly doing that just now so I haven't got a lot of experience that at the moment so allotments haven't been brought into the mix Not at the moment, obviously Edinburgh's allotment strategy is not 217 to 227 and then we have a food growing strategy and that's being prepared by one of my other colleagues I think it's almost complete I believe And Peter, have you been involved in any to an extent? Yes, we've got a allotment strategy but we're also involved in the food growing strategy headed up by Ross Spauldin and his team who's quite a climate change environment sort of thing so within that side of things the food growing strategy yes, allotments play part of it however there's created six pillars we were one of them then we've got food poverty all the different things equally so that around the table are major providers and five flights of cattle produced and so forth so they're looking at the surplus food from there is so however there seems to be quite a bit of confusion between the way it's written in the act is about an allotment strategy and the food growing strategy my mind is allotments per part nine however the food growing strategy encompasses everything else within that local authorities area whether it be surplus produced from the supermarkets to whatever else it may be and there is an area of confusion there because if I haven't spoken to other colleagues and other local authorities there's a wee bit a we've done our food strategy but I'm saying what about your allotment strategy so there's a wee bit a misunderstanding it maybe needs to be clarified at a higher level for that but our food growing strategy is due to be completed by August it will have an influence on the new allotment strategy because of the different diverse approach because we've brought other people to the table what it has done is it's brought more people to the table it's brought NHS Fife into the table it's brought estates into the table it's brought private landowners into the table who are looking at diversifying parts of their farm into different sort of usage so there's a lot of different permutations but I think from the food growing strategy side of it the allotment strategy is very focused and the allotment strategy to me is a wee bit like a spider there's that many legs on it and it's going to be very difficult to make sure that that's co-ordinated and aligned more importantly with the allotment strategy because I keep on saying well it's all very nice to have your food growing strategy but we have got a statutory obligation under part nine to do this so we're currently under that food growing strategy mapping the allotment sites orchards and so forth for the whole of Fife it's started in the west of Fife it's the first phase and working through Greener Cercody and what they're doing so very much gathering that information and bringing it into the table who's going to co-ordinate it at the end of the day and who's going to make sure that the dots are joined up for delivery because sometimes I feel that these documents could be quite lost and they're basically going on the shelf and they're not seen for another five years or something Paul, I didn't direct the question to you but I just realised that maybe with your overview do you have an understanding of how the food strategies are being developed just really as you say from a strategic level there's that many different strategies that local authorities are working at at present and trying to integrate that I don't really think that I think it's still at that stage where people are starting to put things together with climate change strategies action plans etc it's an on-going process it's not really ingrained that we would like it to be yet I think that's something that I'm beginning to realise in my role in this committee that there are so many strategies that local authorities are having to look at strategies, plans many different things but I guess one of the things there is that integration that you're talking about where a local food growing strategy can actually speak to the local authorities climate strategy and the biodiversity strategy so is that holistic thinking to bring in Marie McNair with our closing themes around community organisations volunteering and planning themes thank you, convener just as it's been clear really from the written submissions and the committee visits we've done is the importance of volunteering to successful community growing how can local authorities continue to help community growing in allotments to thrive in areas with lower levels of volunteering that to me isn't going to go first on that one that's a good question I suppose I suppose giving them the land to start off with I suppose would be the important one here you said the community asset transfer would be a starting point but as I said I don't have a lot of experience with that I think from my point of view is that groups can become very disheartened with the red tape part of it and the expectations are just getting left to get on with it and as was mentioned there there's very much needs that umbilical cord from the local authority to the groups to continue the support and equal with that needs to come for the Scottish Government doing the way and my view is that if I've taken forward a growing project I'll go and I'll meet with the group and I'll listen to what they've got to say and I'll listen for their ambitions and analyse that, bring that together and ask them to sort of take a step behind me as an officer so that when the flock happens, i.e. when the planning application goes in and there's all the nimbyism attached to that because there is and there's no sense in saying there's not and what happens is then is I'll guide them through that process once we get the red tape bit out of the way and it comes to then back to them let them take the step forward and walk beside them for a wee while and eventually you should be able to take the step back and that's kind of to me is empowering them without I've seen too many groups go in there and they absolutely get us stoning to start with and they say, right, we're no doing this any longer and we've had enough and sometimes I have seen it where the main objectives actually become part of the project once the project's on the ground so because there's actually a lack of understanding what that project's going to deliver Tapeport and Fife's a good example of that with their community garden and I think I was hunted out of Tapeport for months because but the thing was that the important bit for me was that the groups or the members of the group didn't get head hunted and headed off at the past by the negativism within the site because they couldn't see past their own nose sort of thing to me there are a lot of ambitions out there we've got the hard job and Sandy and Cody that's in the back of me here is about harnessing these ambitions and harnessing the expectations that are placed upon us and knowing a bad way is about guiding them and also there could be some third sector organisations out there as I say that I've got expectations beyond belief but you have to go then back and the important bit for me is to make sure that if there's groups are they representational of actually the bigger wider community and so we're no upsetting the whole thing I think that's a really good point and I think what you're conveying is the importance of that support and all of that and I believe Paul wants to come in and then just mindful of time so I think Marie's got a couple more questions if we can keep those responses succinct Paul Facilitation, nurture subsidy support on an on-going but diminishing basis that's brief thank you very much, Marie that's what I picked up in Glasgow visits yesterday obviously they just want to be hand up from the council, you know the requests that they're on deaf ears and stuff like that so if they could get a wee hand up that would be really important to them because they just want to go on and grow you know the next question is obviously how can communities use local place plans to ensure local authorities include community growing plans, I don't know if any's could answer that one we have discussions on-going discussions with planning all the time it's written into the guidance and Fife for the planning officers admittedly there's a good correspondence goes on there equally we've got CLD workers out there who are working with the communities so there's place approach and so very much what we intend to do is Fife as you probably know is split into seven areas so we've got a lead CLD officer of that seven areas and they will be getting some training on green space very shortly so that they are not given the public out there false hopes in a sense about delivery it's not just all let's get the spade in the ground because we've got contamination or whatever it may be so it's just a wee bit of knowledge for them to understand and again it helps me because there's seven of them and only one of me so it helps to coordinate it a wee bit Thanks for that Andy else Sandy there The last one obviously could the planning system be better used to ensure adequate provision is made for community growers so maybe Sandy's nodding in the public gallery I don't know if he wants to join the table and answer that one We've got another panel and we'll organise that we can just keep focus with where we're at I would agree that yes there needs to be so through the planning guidance there needs to be relaxation so that we could probably develop community gardens and allotment sites however obviously there would be restrictions placed upon if it was obviously within a designed landscape for example or it was a conservation area or something like that and also maybe some guidance on structures so if we were involved in polytunnels and things that you know there might be it could be probably much much easier than it is and what I've found is from personal experiences it depends on what would the planning officer is in that day and the second one is there's no continuity across the planning staff so it depends who you get so one wants a container painted green and the other wants it clad with timber so at the meeting last week we had a plan to say I think we actually need to get some sort of guidance for your staff so that I suggested they maybe had a dedicated officer however he told me doesn't have the resources for that so what I said was well could we write some guidance for all your officers for to go by because it's quite difficult and one of the things before I've touched on that before we finish is Scottish Water have came back to our last two applications using to connect on a water supply on to a grown site we've had all this hassle before about double check valves and return valves and everything but to me that's a fundamental thing that we've got a major supplier like that said well you can't have water but we need the water you know that's the problem so that's going to be restrictive as well so it's something we need to note thanks for that okay thank you very much nobody else wants to come in on the planning bit paul do you have any comments about planning yeah just one just one thought about it really I know that other administrations are experimenting with the concept of biodiversity in that game and perhaps that's something that we could look to in terms of the Scottish planning frameworks okay thanks for that insight I think I've just made a note here also maybe we need to look at Scottish Water that came up quite early on and you have to pay commercial charges for Scottish Water so maybe there needs to be some kind of conversation there that could ease the way for more allotment and community growing spaces it seems strange to me that you're having to respond to commercial charge okay so thanks very much for all the witnesses on the first panel it was a really very insightful helpful conversation and I think actually it was good to hear more of your anecdotes and it certainly painted the bigger picture for me of what you're dealing with and just even things like Peter you were talking about understanding the context of companies going out of business in Fife and then therefore you might be looking at having more people applying for allotment so very useful conversations so now there's going to be a short break before we begin our second panel of witnesses I now welcome our second panel of witnesses to the meeting who are joining us both remotely and in person and we have Sandy Patterson, assistant manager from Food Growing Glasgow City Council Amy Alcorn who's from Greenspace programme in the Scottish Borders Council Marina Curran-Colehart who's the local biodiversity officer for our Garland butte council and Sinclair Lang who is the policy and strategy manager from Aberdeen City Council and it'd be helpful once again if members could direct their questions to a specific witness where possible although I will be happy to bring others in who wish to contribute and I'd be grateful for our witnesses who are online to type and are in the chat function in blue jeans to indicate if you do want to come in and I'll now open up the session to members and I'll start with the first question so let me see so the question is basically we've been learning in last week's session in our visits and also this morning's session that clearly there's a huge benefits for community growing spaces for people to be growing both in community growing spaces and allotments and I'd be interested to hear and maybe I'll start this question with I'll direct this to Marina to start I'd be interested to hear what you think the main barriers are preventing local authorities from creating more allotments and community growing spaces Thank you for your question convener in terms of barriers I have to give you a little bit of a part of history in terms of our Gailan views we only have three allotments and they're run by allotment associations the land is cancelled and the allotment association pay a peppercorn rent on an annual basis in terms of the barriers I think people's decisions is certainly one of them in terms of the land searches we do and we work with the states in terms of looking at growing opportunities within towns and villages in order to meet the needs of the applicants on the waiting list in a particular area but we also acknowledge that there is an educational role in reasonable steps that the council have to take under part 9 of the act also in terms of community benefit and community empowerment I think individuals sometimes can have a misunderstanding of the expectation of what we can deliver but also what we can excuse me sorry what we can provide we have had a particular group that have been knocking on the door for a number of years for a land and we've provided a number of sites but their expectations were basically that they were fully facilitated in terms of boundary ffencing water and other facilities so expectations need to be managed and I think that's one of the barriers that we've tried to overcome with information and signposting in terms of meeting those needs Thanks very much Mermina Sinclair What's your experience in Aberdeen? Thank you for the opportunity to come and give evidence today as well It's been a really interesting conversation I think a lot of it's come out this morning the benefits are, as we know, multiple and they're outlined in the guidance that was issued in 2018 I myself was involved in a social return on investment research study in Aberdeen in 2012 looking at the benefits of allotments and somehow I just wanted to pick up from the conversation this morning was that for every pound invested there was eight pounds of return in investment for community growing sites so there is clearly a massive benefit there but there are barriers undoubtedly for us the discussion about finances has already been had both in terms of revenue and capital so for Aberdeen City Council we spend more on allotments than we make on allotments so there is a deficit there in our revenue budget how we manage that going forward I guess is a decision for politicians about the pricing of allotments but it does have an impact and when we look at that across all the other things that our ground services and others need to do by diversity, for climate change land management, engaging communities and so on it becomes a multiple complex problem to maintenance is a constant word that is raised whenever we talk about what we are going to do with our land how we are going to engage communities in the use of our land and then there is a question of capital obviously there isn't a lot of money swimming around for public authorities and it's diminishing how we can use that as well we can access money from outside but a lot of that again has been directed towards climate change investment rightly so and by diversity and not necessarily food growing opportunities there is a capital and revenue finance issues on the other side we've got a limited number of people that can actually work in this area again that's a revenue budget issue but as our weighting list increased there's a need to manage that process which then takes away from actually delivering further allotments sites and supporting communities and delivering those sites so that resource base is getting thin or as demand is increasing I think we have one dedicated officer in Aberdeen who works on allotments so that's a new thing Communities, there's been a lot of conversation about engaging communities community asset transfer process and so on it's complicated we need to provide that umbilical cord I think the term was used for communities that requires resource from our assets teams from our community learning and development teams and they also need to provide that resource around lots of other community issues not just food growing in terms of delivering more sites for themselves fear, continuity etc so there's a lot of resource that goes into bringing communities forward and supporting them and it's not always there to really handhold them all the way through that process planning is another thing that's been mentioned and I think planning can do more it's getting better and I think the new local development plans will take a stronger role in terms of protecting and delivering more sites we've built it into developer obligations negotiations and we need to put more pressure on developers to deliver sites through master planning and through site delivery but I think the new local development plans will help with that process it's just there will be a lag in actually seeing delivery on the ground in terms of that so it's money, it's resources in terms of council, it's communities developers, planners etc thank you very much for that very thorough overview I just wanted to see if Amy or Sandy want to come in on barriers Sandy there's several barriers that we think that we believe are preventing additional provision from happening firstly it is the perceived capacity issue within areas associated with economic disadvantage there is also a perceived distrust of the local authorities by community groups and citizens particularly in the areas of socio-economic disadvantage we seek to work in a collaborative approach and often there is a capacity building issue to be looked at and I plan to develop for that before we can move to the stage of constructing sites a more recent site in Grotschappel which was brought to your attention by Police Scotland who ended up as an excellent partner and took his a period of 30 months from inception to breaking a spade on the ground for growers the narrative about that has been touched on several times this morning about managing expectations there is an enthusiastic spike at the start and if the expectations aren't met very very quickly indeed that enthusiasm wins resilience and gumption are two character traits specific to the Scottish personality and encouraging that and making people aware and having a transparent conversation first instance can often go a long way to keeping these people on the journey with you there's also the competing priorities for the use of available open space particularly in areas of urban density and in post industrial cities such as Glasgow Land contamination is a big issue as well so that's other factors that actually come into the mix which may not be recognised by many of our citizens food growing essentially is not normalised within everyday life and I think that's possibly one of the biggest barriers that we have people have disconnected with their food where it comes from and how they actually produce it there's a limited awareness within the educational curriculum about the benefits of food growing as well the density of the urban housing and the competing priorities in available space is a huge one people see spaces however there is many priorities that a city needs to address and the food growing while raising up the political agenda at this point in time is not always maintained at that level so the statutory obligation provided by the community power act part 9 have been excellent the community asset transfers side of it is probably convoluted at a lot more than it needed to be convoluted it's a barrier to many many community groups from accessing land and in Glasgow we've taken a quite unique step in developing an organisation called people make Glasgow communities which is a step below the community asset transfer but it still provides the tenure access funding from groups such as the national lottery and it's pleasing to say that we've recently transferred over an old production nursery to local or an organisation many of you may know on a 25-year tenure and we look forward to seeing that side coming to fruition over the next three years having food growing recognises as an individual theme within a place making standard would also be of a benefit and remove many of the barriers that I would understand it puts food growing on the same level as many of the other themes within the place making standard and we always try to take a place making standard approach to the development and delivery of our allotment and growing spaces within Glasgow and the need for a clear toolkit to measure and highlight the additional benefits of food growing, local growing and health benefits, social interaction green prescriptions, community cohesion all these other qualitative benefits that don't show up in the spreadsheet something really needs to be done on that and it's something that we've been working towards initially in our pilot over at the grow chapel we're trying to work with focus groups and carry out a five-year research programme to actually prove the case of the benefits that allotments make Thanks very much for that response and that's a really interesting point around food growing needing to be in the place making standard and that could be a great help Amy, you wanted to come in Yeah, absolutely, thank you very much for having me today After listening to what Sandy's just said I couldn't agree more with absolutely every one of his points he has said many of the things that I wanted to bring into this conversation I completely agree that none of this can be sat on a spreadsheet it is really about enhancing people's lives with food growing and getting it into the curriculum and getting young people involved from a very early age so that they have experience of this and so it is something that they take forward for the rest of their lives I'm probably quite different from most of the other witnesses that you've had today I have been working in public sector for seven months entirely previous to this I have worked in third sector and managed a food growing sorry, a food growing charity that worked doing food growing projects across the Scottish borders so I'm very new to local authority work but the reason that I applied for the job here at the council being the green space officer was because I feel so passionately about community food growing and that everybody should be able to have access to it and during my role I have worked with at least 20 community groups who want to get growing food and that's where I see a huge demand now is that because of this strategy and because the Scottish Borders Council have managed to get their strategy out and have shown it to people across the borders that so many people are coming forward and sometimes these people are individual people who are coming forward to us for advice and help and other times their schools, their primary schools their secondary schools they are organisations that have a wealth of experience delivering community growing projects but they want extra help for example, recently they want compost so I manage a network for the Scottish Borders Council which is the Scottish Borders Community Food Growers Network and during this we have managed to provide 50 tonnes of compost to growing spaces I guess what I'm trying to say is there are barriers absolutely and for me they seem to come down to financial barriers but there is a huge drive across Scotland and definitely in the borders that people are desperate to grow and they are desperate for help with growing and that is something that I find really encouraging and welcome in to see. Thanks very much Amy for your contribution and I think that Borders Council are obviously very lucky to have somebody who's been working in the food growing in the communities and third sector area so you've got a lot to offer in terms of that perspective I'm going to now bring in Miles Briggs with another theme and his questions Good morning to our second panel thanks for joining us here on online today I wanted to ask a question with regards to part 9 of the act and specifically to ask what difference do you feel that's managed to make in terms of access to new allotments but also for those who are not looking for an allotment by access to community growing where you've seen that expanded so I'll maybe start with Sinclair and if anyone else wants to come in please do Thank you for the question I was going to put an R in and say actually I'm going to come in on that one so I think part 9 of the act has really helped actually while if you look at the numbers on the spreadsheet partly I guess because the community empowerment act came in and there was a lot of promotion a lot of engagement around this issue that brought people out of the woodwork made them aware that the opportunities were available so that pushed things up on top of that we've got Covid and people's desire to get outdoors impacts on people's budgets as well more recently and the availability to grow your own food and so on so there's been a number of reasons a perfect storm to send a waiting list so it looks bad but actually I think there's been a lot of opportunity because it's really forced local authorities to think again about how they're going to approach this issue if it wasn't produced on local authorities to act we'd probably just sit on the waiting list for a period of time because all those barriers all those challenges that I mentioned before specifically probably finance but it really has forced us to get round the table with our partners and to look at what we can do to write more access to allotments and community food growing spaces together a partnership in Aberdeen where we develop the food growing strategy together and that really allowed us to look at the issue from a whole range of angles and put a lot of effort into not just allotments but actually access to food and the whole food system specifically we worked with Green Space Scotland who were great and helped us with our framework but we also worked with an organisation called CIFI and community food initiatives northeast who look at the whole food system and provide food skills food banks, support for community growing groups, access to land and so on so the emphasis for us initially was really around how do we get communities more engaged with food all the way through the process and how do we give them access to the land whether that's one person going to a community site a group setting up a community site or any other range of activities across that spectrum so it's really really helped in bringing that together we are Aberdeen is also part of the national movement of sustainable food places partnerships so we have a bronze award at the moment we put in for our silver award that partnership as well helps to look at the whole food system who can get involved where so there has been a huge movement outside of traditional allotments that space where one individual or a family goes to to grow their foods provided by the local authority and a much bigger move which has seen community groups pop up do community asset transfers or just take on a bit of land for a little while massive increase in that and that includes volunteering and all the other benefits but back to the allotments waiting list we're now forced through part 9 of the act to actually look and take reasonable measures what we're going to do to tackle that waiting list we have recruited a full-time allotments officer who's now managing those waiting lists much stronger than they were in the past so I think pointing to a question earlier you know we look at our waiting lists twice annually and do a cleanse if you'd like where we contact those on the waiting list whether they still really want to be on there we do audits of our sites three times a year to make sure that those sites are being used and that people have fair access to the allotments that are there so that's gone a lot stronger we've got dedicated resources working hard to make sure those sites are well managed and accessible we're also doing the other thing of splitting plots having micro plots, starter plots and so on that we've talked about before and I think that's really really helped in providing sites or plots that are usable to individuals not everyone wants those big tennis court-sized plots they just want somewhere to grow a few fruit and vegetables so the micro plots, the start-up plots the better managing of the sites the dedicated resource to managing allotments and I think there is a lag period so Aberdeen has over a thousand people on our waiting list at the moment five years ago we had 150 so it's been a massive change but I think once that Covid and the awareness we get the drop-off we've probably plateaued we're going to get a bit of a drop-off sites are being managed better and once we can start bringing forward more allotments sites through the resources that we have I think we will see that waiting list dropped and that probably wouldn't happen if it wasn't for this juicy common local authorities Thank you for that Marina I think you wanted to come in on this as well Great, thank you minister I've just come in on new developments certainly there's opportunities for community growing facilities within open space protection areas and we allow that under our sustainable guidance in our LDP also factoring in nature in crisis as well from a biodiversity point of view the benefits are right across the board in terms of not only food benefits in terms of biodiversity in particular pollinators etc and obviously climate change but it's essentially about place making and certainly what underpins it for me is the community empowerment and certainly in Argyll we're very much community based small groups of people have a common interest but we also have other factors that help with that in terms of local development trusts small groups develop their project and particularly food growing to just going to the hassle of the planning side of things the community engagement and building on that project and then having that ownership as well I think that is really important and listening to Peter earlier and Ian and the wealth of management effort they have to put in in terms of council owned allotments it's something that's quite foreign to us in Argyll and Bute because communities have been getting up and doing it for themselves for quite a long time but with these tools of development trusts in the background helping them to sort out funding but the council has been there in terms of helping enable and there's been mention of as a transfer of which we're particularly keen on but it does come with a lot of caveats and that's something that many community groups in order to succeed with their projects also in terms of farm diversification there's quite a lot of interest with small and crofting communities to open up growing spaces a very traditional view and I'm sure we can all picture in our minds what an allotment looks like and in terms of the people that manage them that has changed and I think perhaps it needs to be more engaging with a lot more people and also a lot more age groups as well but farm diversification is one certainly that can take the hassle out of a community and individuals being able to grow their own on the size of plot that they choose to manage also within the school side of things we have eco schools but also there's food growing programmes and one school I visited there recently in Lockgillpad some poly tunnels and they were supplying the kitchen with some fruit and vegetables and herbs and even making jam from some of the fruits of their labour as well so there is this culture of food growing and certainly nutrition in the schools it's just making sure that it jumps the gap to taking it home and not just sort of saying that's siloed in the school environment and that's actually for life and I think that it needs to come out and just finishing on my point there in terms of health and wellbeing certainly we have a project with the coast and countryside trust in our guile called branching out and it's for people that have suffered mental illness it gets them out we initially started with woodlands now we're into growing plots and certainly the benefits of those people that our clients are immeasurable in the sense of their health and wellbeing being out in the fresh air even cooking outside and I suppose tasting their produce as well which is so important and I think the taste of home grown can never be the supermarkets and other outlets can't compete with that so I think that there's certainly what we can do in terms of encouraging but in our guile we're not at a standing start by any matter of means but our culture is very different from the council having allotments we don't have an allotment officer but we do maintain a waiting list and for our sins we have 106 people waiting for allotment spaces and we're working with local allotment associations but also community gardens as well and I think that's one perhaps area that could be explored in terms of engaging people with growing their own they see what's happening with a community garden they have a little bit of an interest they might help out somebody with watering if they're away on holiday and certainly they're bitten by the bug and I think perhaps a little bit of osmosis on that level goes a long way thank you Marina Amy did you want to come in then if Sandy you want to come as well yes please I wanted to touch on the idea of part 9 and how that has helped and I'd say it really has helped having this legislation because it's meant that we have really had to look at our waiting lists and how we can manage those and we found that we have 5 sites across sorry we have 6 sites across the Scottish Borders and when we really did study them and look at them really thoroughly we found that there were people on every single waiting list across all 5 so we have managed to do a cleanse of the waiting list and we do email everybody annually and ask if they do still want to be on the waiting list for their designated area the other thing excuse me the other thing that we do is to look at the details of an interactive map that we have built for our website that shows every community garden across the Scottish Borders as well as the allotment association managed sites which are separate from our own sites there are 5 across the borders that are on Scottish Borders Council land but they are not managed by Scottish Borders Council whereas we have 6 that we do manage ourselves so we give all this information out as well as links to the local community garden so that people have got the option to choose whether they want to remain on the list or whether maybe looking for a different alternative is there but what we have found is that most people want to stay on the list some people will go to a community garden and they do want that community they want that connection with their community but the need for allotments is definitely still there people want their own space that isn't part of a community garden that they can go to and just be by themselves and do their own thing and do their own gardening or their own growing there is a massive space for community gardens as well and this was touched on in the first session that there are some people that take on allotments but don't have the horticultural experience and community gardens are a brilliant place to introduce people who are interested in growing into a horticultural environment but once they've been at a community garden for a few years they may well then decide that there is the right time to apply for an allotment so I think these community gardens and allotments can work in harmony together but I think there is absolutely a need for more allotments I mean our waiting list is currently equal to the amount of plots that we have so we are definitely over the 50% threshold during the seven months I've been here we have managed to create seven new plots which are at the very final point of having their fences built now that they've been cleared and they'll be offered out very soon but there is still so much work to be done on finding the sites and finding the resources to be able to put these into place thank you thank you, thank you community impairment act I suppose the biggest impact between industry for collaboration previously there was almost any of them and as we understand it there will be very challenging to deliver statutory obligations under the community impairment act as a standalone local authority it's strange that our networks come into that and I would command Glasgow community food network and all its partners in the approach and openness that they've taken with Glasgow city council it's been refreshing because it helped us to identify key actions arising from an extensive engagement process that we carry to our citizens at the site and the local growers at the forefront so that developed how we shaped our approach that provided an appropriate policy position as well for food growing particularly part 9 of the act it's given consideration across many departments within the local authority we now have an internal officers working group taken in officers from many departments within Glasgow city council and stakeholders group that's developed and let's grow together fund at the moment that will encourage citizens and organisations within the city to tap into this funding stream to develop sites it's created a web page it provides almost a one-stop shop within Glasgow with digital mapping arising from the engagement process of the land that was put forward by our citizens that is currently being assessed for suitability for growing and we encourage our citizens and their organisations within the city to come forward and challenge us to move forward with those sites and take them forward it's also opened up the discussion is well beyond allotments to the point that we perceive food growing to be a mosaic of a variety of streams and themes from community gardens all the way through window boxes to urban farms is there any reason we can't be growing in church grounds is there any reason we can't be growing in school grounds and other landowners within the city contribute more as well it certainly won't up the conversation with our housing associations in Glasgow as well and we've got a specific group looking at supporting local housing associations to develop growing spaces as well and it's raised an awareness at grassroots and political levels of the contributions that food growing can provide to achieving the strategies and policies of local authority so that's where this position does at this point in time that's great thank you I can't point there with regards to making this about every public sector organisation looking at their land and potentially what they can hand over and especially if it's already fenced some of the set up costs I think all my questions have been covered I'm so happy to hand back Thanks Miles, now we'll move over to questions from Marie McNair Thanks convener, good morning panel just one question that's been covered but with some people to what extent are local authorities taking a more joined up approach the provision of growing spaces recognising the contribution that allotments in community growing spaces can make to meet that demand I know that Sandy you've touched on that I'm just going to direct my question to Amy if that's okay Yes, sorry Ed Absolutely, so one of the things that I think you were asking about was whether or not we can touch on working with our community planning partners and work with them more to use the spaces that they have for community growing this was something that we addressed a few months ago where we presented to the community planning partnership and then up to the strategic board to ask them to put this into their plans so that they could put it into their plans moving forward that they would look at their green spaces and start promoting people to be able to go in and access and use it and this has worked with some areas in the NHS that we've been working with in Huntleyburn in the Scottish Borders and also with Housing Association land the housing associations that we're working with in the Scottish Borders are really on board now to use their land and there's a community garden that's just started working in partnership with abundant borders in Selkirk that's also got a partnership with the high school so it's brilliant to facilitate these groups working together and coming up with green space opportunities for local residents that wouldn't necessarily be there without the joined-up approach of all the organisations who are on board does that answer the question or would you like me no that's fine the question's been covered so that's me on that one it's very much marine now moving over to questions from Paul McClellan and thank you panel can you touch on this one as well it's talking around about the waiting lists and I think it's really just asking one around about how many people are on the waiting lists in your own area would there be a benefit in tracking that nationally and there's a couple of other things that we're asking about the waiting list and the provision one one two talks about being more than five years people taking off if they've been on the list for five years and the help is there for people on the waiting list looking at other alternatives that are out there so I know there's a few questions but it's really just talking about how you manage your waiting list Sandy you probably come to yourself first of all and then open it up after that management of waiting lists is currently devolved within Glasgow it is something that we're working on and as we embark on our discussion with our allotment associations around rules and regulations that will certainly be one of the points that we discuss we'll be looking at a centralised waiting list and again I'd refer back to community empowerment act and in fact it's given us a statutory provision it allows us then to look at IT solutions on this and we'll be working with software companies in the south of England who are looking to develop a package to assist with the management of our waiting lists it'll be linked to our GIS system and that'll allow people to identify plots that are available currently and can apply for that we manage them in a chronological order first come, first served waiting list, I'm totally advised up to 12 years in Glasgow but I'm also very aware that other allotment sites that you may only have to wait 2 weeks in Glasgow so it's an interesting blend that we have and it'll be interesting to see how when we move to the centralised list that pans out those that tend to be on the waiting list for the longer times that I've mentioned there tend to be site specific they want a plot in one site in one site only and we welcome that as well it's within the place standard within liveable neighbourhoods however we like to provide as much scope in options as possible so we will be looking at a citywide approach to that how we can accelerate providing to manage waiting lists and get them down with the accelerating provision that's difficult in itself and it's not without its challenges our networking approach and our collaboration approach allows other organisations seek and apply for funding that isn't available to the local authorities and we can support them on that facility and sign posts we've also been in conversation with Glasgow allotment forum who had recognised that people in waiting lists were perhaps just there in a limbo state and they've tried to activate that by developing an organisation called the People's Plot and the People's Plot then pulled together like-minded folks within the waiting list to try and advocate for development sites and support of that as well so any thanks for that I don't know who else wants to come in now Sinclair wants to come in thank you so our waiting lists are our local authority only waiting lists that we manage there are private sites in Aberdeen which I think we have 135 so we have about 550 council plots and about 135 private plots it's just the council waiting lists that we manage through a digital process now which obviously makes it easier for people to apply and for us to communicate with them and like was just said we also do that in a chronological way I don't think we've had anyone over five years on our waiting lists there may be one or two but those are looking for particular sites so they're willing to wait that little bit longer to make sure they get somewhere closer to home or that has the facilities that they're looking for in terms of national tracking yes absolutely having a national picture of any subject and I would imagine that using the annual allotments reports would be a useful way to do that if it has standardised information that can then be aggregated at a national level certainly hearing the conversations today has been really useful to understand what the context are in other local authorities and it's quite varied by the sounds of it and when you can look at that data you can also draw down into it and know who's a contact around particular issues and tell what insights can they share that we can learn from that we can then build into our approach more locally so very much yes to our national tracking approach questions also asked around alternatives so we now have we also have a digital map of our allotment sites, our community growing spaces our community growing projects and so on across the city so we use Google for that and we just simply map out everything that's going on and we provide that online to allotment applicants when they come in and it means that they become aware that there are other things available to them rather than just allotments where they'll have to wait for a number of well depending but potentially a number of years to get access to a site so either as an alternative or as something to keep them going in the meantime where can they get involved with either just getting access to a community site developing a community site themselves or other sorts of projects that are going on and we have provided projects for schools and funding for schools to develop growing within their within their sites we've also encouraged workplaces to take up growing as well so we've had almost a three-pronged approach for our local outcome improvement plan to say schools growing together communities growing together and workplaces growing together so we're really trying to encourage people to get access to food growing through any route available to them and we have developed new sites and so on as well both community sites and council lot on the sites too so there is a huge range of opportunities available to people that's making them aware of them and facilitating their access to them including things like partnership working and funding encouraging NHS our sports facilities accepture to try and make their land available for for these sorts of opportunities as well Thanks for that Nick it takes me on to the next part I think Mary wants to come in as well Yes, and just in terms of managing our waiting lists and our kind of view we've kind of set up a dating agency really we have the map and the opportunities are but they're not always necessary allotment per se but community growing spaces and certainly there's a lot of provisional spaces included in our local development emerging local development plans so again it's just making sure that those on the waiting list are kept updated so we don't they don't go stay long us and disappear so that at least if they're not interested any longer they still have that opportunity to tell us when we liaise with them and give them further information I'm going to open up the next part of the question one was around about and Sinclair thank you touch not around about what help is available for community projects in terms of the support you know in terms of funding in terms of just I suppose that logistical help at the start of somebody's looking to take on an allotment or a community garden what helps out there and just in the same question what more could Scottish Government do as part of that to help you in that in that regard Sandy don't know if I might touch and open it up again to probably Sinclair and open up again I suppose the biggest contribution the Scottish Government could make probably been touched on earlier on would be Capital and Revenue however there is the national planning framework and a greater consideration of food growing within the national planning framework I feel to understand why developers are allowed to provide the size of a garden that they are that offers them an opportunity for a family to carry out food growing within their own premises the regulations on structures on allotment sites as well are particularly off-putting many many groups an awful lot of growers come from more realistic approach to growing and it's more about nurturing soil nurturing themselves and their families and their wider communities and then you come up against the regulations of the systems that we have in place through local authorities and national government and that can be difficult for many many groups to navigate and very very off-putting simplified processes, clear planning regulations would certainly be a benefit and of course the perennial issue of revenue funding available to maintain sites after the initial capital has been spent and set them up the revenue would contribute to of some resource being available to provide the support and facilitation and signposting that many of these groups encourage and welcome and might just be enough to get them from a point of inception to empowerment Andy, thanks for that. Sinclair wants to come in. Sinclair. Thank you. So in Aberdeen when the community amount act came out and we were developing our food growing strategy we actually put 150,000 of epsilon in to help support communities bring forward community growing projects. I think we supported 30 projects, some of those actually brought forward sites others were around skills and access to food and so on. There has been a degree of capital and revenue support from the city here, but it is limited and it's not enough to meet the challenge that we have and that's not criticism of Aberdeen City Council that's just the revenue and capital situation that all local authorities public bodies face at the moment and all the challenges they're trying to tackle. We do put some money into participatory budgeting as well and try and encourage communities to use that through our local locality planning etc. We have a funding team who will support communities with any sorts of projects including those sorts of projects to access and navigate that funding landscape. We have a community asset transfer process and we do provide guidance and a bit of handholding around that although that is complicated and scary for anyone who doesn't have the experience and skills around those sorts of issues. We have community learning development and others who try and handhold through that process. Our environment services who do the operational side of the land management have, I would say, turned the ship around so historically we would have been a very traditional, we know the grass, we plant trees, we provide an allotment site and have really changed to a more community engagement approach on the back of legislation but also on the back of just demand and available resources. Obviously getting involved in this stuff provides huge benefits and so supporting communities in that reduces the revenue burden on the council and provides those benefits to communities to access. They have changed some of their structure to provide more community support and to provide access to land and do some handholding and that umbilical cord as well. There is a range of support available out there, probably never enough but it's certainly heading in the right direction and does provide more support for communities to access through current opportunities. Thanks, thank you. Just on that in terms of on-going revenue, some of the case studies we have in our community food growing strategy highlight that in terms of open days, sales and even extending to sort of more cultural things in terms of music etc and art to continue that flow of revenue as well as the annual fees. Obviously these are not council run, but the associations themselves free associations they have open days and that is a means of increasing their revenue flow but it's just for basic maintenance and the council basically will ensure that the place is still fit for purpose and help out there. We do have a good wealth fund and we also have a suite of community development officers to be able to help to access other funding as well particularly in light of climate change I think and biodiversity is very important that you know these things are not stand alone they're integrated and they work best when they're working together. Thank you. I'm aware Amy I don't want to put you on the spot but I'm aware that you have to leave so I just wanted to give you a little bit of space in case there's anything you really want to make sure that we're aware of from your perspective in the Scottish Borders. Thank you very much. I was just about to say I completely concur with everything Sinclair said there is some support available for community growers when they come to us and they get in touch and say that they want to start projects the first thing I would do is to visit them and see their site what they're looking to do and then work with the community engagement team to help them to secure funding to get the projects up and running the issue with that is that that funding is usually quite a small pot plot of money and that that'll get them started but after that it's very difficult to, unless it's completely volunteer led, it's very difficult for these projects to sustain themselves and then on the bigger picture of providing more ground sites and more allotments I had a meeting with the state so it was really really useful where we looked to all their grazing lands in the grazing fields at what could be available and then started to research into how much it would cost to set up a new set of allotments and we were looking in the region at between £40,000 and £70,000 and that is money that Scottish Borders Council do not have available for this type of agenda and it's incredibly important that there is resources for us to be able to deliver because we have this brilliant strategy and this brilliant legislation that encourages all to re-look at the land we have and look at the provisions that we're making for the people that live within our constitutions but if there's no revenue then we are really struggling to provide the service that we're looking to do and it's not like the enthusiasm's not there the team that I work with where they're incredibly enthusiastic about providing allotment spaces and community growing projects across the Scottish Borders it's just purely that there's a lack of financial there and thank you so much for having me today it's been a real experience for me thank you thank you for joining us it's been good to have your perspective we're going to move on to the theme of local food growing strategies and I know Sinclair you've touched on it already quite quite a lot but I can have a general question around how has it been to create those strategies if you have indeed and I think both Aberdeen City Council and I think actually all councils have them that are represented today but how has it been to create those and you know how did you bring the allotments or the food growing spaces into into those strategies in your thinking and maybe I'll start with Sinclair to see if you've got any more to add on what you already said and then I'll take it to Marina and then bring in Sandy thank you I would say it was a very positive experience for us it really gave us the opportunity to widen out our thinking traditionally we had an allotment forum where we'd started to move to more devolved management of allotment sites across the city in the previous 10 years really part of that managing the resource available to us to create more control and ownership of what was available to them so this was building on that but winding it out beyond allotments as well on bringing in things like its your neighbourhood, Britain in Bloom and all these other elements I'd say we got round the table with a diverse group so we had allotment groups we had council allotment officers and green space officers with green space Scotland community growing groups and so on that really looks like it wasn't written by the council it was facilitated by the council and co-ordinated by us and that's probably why it focuses more on community growing I would say than allotments partly because at that time the allotment's waiting list wasn't through the roof as it is now times have changed I think we probably need to look again at the focus and I think our reasonable measures are doing that taking that shift from community growing or waiting list but having partners like Cfine who are a whole food system regional partner incredibly helpful having green space Scotland on board who have a national picture an experience across a range of green space issues was really helpful and certainly Cfine are now embedded as a really strong partner in everything we do around food as a council be that providing summer of play with food activities for schools to tackle food poverty to supporting community growing organisations through a festival where everyone can get to meet each other and do stuff taking on board the food growing strategy implementation group hosting the sustainable food partnership and so on so all of these things have kind of catalyzed around the community empowerment act and that sustainable food places approach so on the whole positive really great for community growing probably need to take a slight refocus on allotment thank you for that response and I guess one of the things I gleaned from that because I was starting to think okay so there's a strategy but then what does it look like on the ground but it's great to hear that you've actually got a food growing strategy implementation group it's not just something that sits in the digital dusty cupboard but actually is having an impact on the ground Marina how's your food growing strategy ours is actually doing quite well we took the approach it was I work in development policy so we had a development policy team plus others from development management legal and community so they covered all of the such people we wanted to engage with so we had a group of stakeholders and they included the community councils and the development trust and any existing allotment associations and community gardens that we knew of but obviously we didn't have the full picture so it was really a very good exercise to find out where things were happening across our guile and certainly the community councils came into their own on that in terms of the food growing strategy itself we basically want to empower communities and empower individuals basically to join forces because allotments don't happen on the back of one individual they work best when there's a community involved but we have a series of food festivals and we also have food from our guile which has been in existence long before the strategy promoting food from our guile as well but also the businesses and community groups that actually support that is a really good vehicle for encouraging people to add to that particular approach in terms of supporting the whole of our guile and the one thing that I haven't actually mentioned is our 23 inhabited islands and with our climate change and some of the ferries not playing ball in terms of weather conditions and whether they're full on the islands as well in terms of growing food and a lot of them have adopted areas, sheltered areas to be able to do that so in particular we have isla and colonsie and tyree and of course mall as well so we're very much in tune with having to have that sort of siege mentality as well having enough in the store people's going so that's been well I suppose settled into our culture but as you say we have across the board but at the moment I work with two other colleagues based in the asset transfer unit in the States but also in legal and we monitor what's happening in terms of our food strategy but we're very well aware that it will need to be updated in the next few years because we adopted ours in 2020 so in 2025 it will be updated but we have been collecting further information and one of the things that hasn't really been mentioned is dealing with food security as well on a more local level and certainly one of the groups in Obann run a hope kitchen and they have an allotment within a food growing space within an old garden in Obann itself and they have been particularly successful in terms of getting funding engaging with volunteers having part including an educational role as well but also meeting the needs for those that are less fortunate as well and certainly they've been quite creative in keeping their on-going funding and making sure that they remain sustainable and I think that they should be applauded on that level Thank you Marina yes I actually did hope kitchen and got taken to that fantastic garden and it's just absolutely incredible to see what they're doing there and I think also your comment about needing to update the food strategy of course you know at the moment what's going through the parliament is the good food nation bill and that's going to have another form of local authority plan around food, a good food plan so probably there's going to need to be some thinking about how those two strategies work together but Sandy did you want to come in and talk about your perspective of being on the allotment side and how did you get involved if there is a Glasgow city food strategy yes there most certainly is a Glasgow food growing strategy it was published in 1920 20 apologies and since the publishing of the food growing strategy which was developed through engagement with Green Space Scotland and Glasgow city council actually taking a stakeholder role in the process rather than a driver within it so there was an opportunity to hear to listen to what our citizens were saying and that then developed into the food growing strategy which develops 16 high level actions so that the city can deliver more growing spaces and support growers as detailed in the food growing strategy it's from the allotment side of things we will continue to work on our annual allotment reports however we understand that the food growing strategy supersedes the requirement for an allotment strategy per se so that's perhaps what we touched on earlier on we see the food growing strategy is a much wider conversation than the allotment conversation the allotment conversation is very specific and very focused the food growing strategy provides scope for a much broader range of food growing opportunities to be available to the citizens of the city not everyone wants to grow in an allotment but some people find the allotment rules and regulations quite restrictive to the creative processes they apply in community gardens, vertical growing hydroponics, aquaponics regenerative agriculture are all other approaches that are much sought after in Glasgow and certainly make a positive impact to climate and ecological emergency declarations it provides an opportunity for us to have a conversation around a bit soils and health of those as well and how they can actually help contribute to carbon sequestration from atmospheric CO2 into soil organic carbon can help with conversations about health and wellbeing and as much as we now have five GP surgeries in the Durham Chapel area of Glasgow who refer through community link practitioners citizens to the grow chapel site is a form of prescription almost where gardening is provided is a form of stress reduction gives people an opportunity just to reflect and take away the buzz of everyday life it's also contributed to the development of the Glasgow city food plan which looks at the whole food system and over six different themes food growing strategy contributes into the community side of that and it's excellent to see the activation of private, public and third sector organisations coming together to develop that city food plan which contributes to the overall city development frameworks as well the 16 key actions of the food growing strategy can be summed up into four main themes which is essentially increased growing spaces increasing improved sources of information support greater network and information sharing and support policy and process improvements and that's something that we're definitely going to be delivering from the food growing strategy Sinclair touched on how they've done implementation group we also have such a thing in Glasgow it's the Glasgow community food growers forum and they are monitoring the delivery of the food growing strategy not only monitoring it but actively participating in the delivery of the actions from that and that's made up of a network of stakeholders from allotment associations community gardens and other forms of growing within the city as well as the external officers group that we mentioned earlier on that brings in other partners from NHS local housing associations Health Improvement Coordination as Police Scotland and we also have our internal officers group that draw together internal officers so the conversation is across the whole council and not just specifically within the parts development side of things I was very heartening to hear that so many different departments and groups and organisations are involved in that plan I worked extensively in community food growing in New York City and at that time, 20 years ago there wasn't that level of awareness that the understanding that everybody needs to get behind the kind of work we're doing and the massive benefits that it can bring to the city Marie, you've got a few more questions you wanted to ask Thanks, convener You've been touched on by others how can local authorities help communities growing in allotments to thrive in areas of low volunteering It's a very difficult one to answer and the one I touched on there would be around the community lines practitioners in the unique position that they have within local GP surgeries I would understand there's a correlation between those who are termed as hard to reach and showing up at GP surgeries The community line practitioners are ideally placed to start to open that conversation to look at a person-centred approach to their health and wellbeing to have that conversation around have you ever considered food growing have you ever been part of an allotment have you went for a walk in a park or these other benefits that we get in directly from our open spaces that's certainly one way of doing it The other way is raising awareness continually talking with people advocating presentations to area partnership committees presentations to our elected members presentations to our community planning partnerships attending conferences raising awareness the areas of socio-economic disadvantage you will find there is grass root organisations there are chapels a great example of that our site at growchapo came about from the quality of life group that was chaired by Police Scotland and they were finding people were dropping between the gaps between our health and social care partnerships wasn't the criminal behaviour it was manifest in this criminal behaviour it was a mental health issue at the back of that it then led to an approach where we looked at an underutilised piece of open space within an area of socio-economic disadvantage we started an engagement process it was a massive response in favour of development into a growing space we've got 35 organisations I believe involved in growchapo each one of those organisations has access to the site and they bring in their user groups their user groups then get access to the site they might never have been aware of before so that's one way raising awareness is another way and the position in the community links practitioners within GP surgeries is also another way where we can get areas of low volunteering and encouraging people to take even if it's not just volunteering volunteering comes secondary and enthusing them with the benefits that growing can provide you tend to find if they've got a fair bit of time available to them they'll contribute that to the site we were in Springburn yesterday and it was amazing that we're just in the middle of the housing state but once you get into the allotment you just didn't realise where you could be anywhere actually I was quite child there to be honest I was going to move on Sinclair you've touched this earlier again the planning system would be better used to ensure adequate provision is made for new and existing community growers anything else you'd like to throw in there thank you yes if I can just touch on one thing from the previous point as well before I move on to that so in Seafine where they do food banks they actually engage with those people who are coming with food insecurity see if there's an opportunity for them to get involved in volunteering and growing their own foods in terms of planning a very interesting point and certainly colleagues of mine have made clear that planning can probably do more so historically growing sites in green spaces are protected in local planning policy probably not strongly enough now we are using mapping much more partly through the section 9 of this act to provide a map for food growing potential but we're now linking that up with the open space audits and strategies that come through the planning system as well so I think there was a suggested link to bring together the mapping for food growing with the mapping for general green space across local authority areas and we're doing that there's a delay from the original food growing strategy to now because our open space audit wasn't done at the same time but we've tweaked the way that we're doing that and we're now looking at all of the land, publicly accessible land across Aberdeen over a certain size and asking the question what is the potential for that land to be used for food growing once we have that data that we can then start drilling down and mapping that out a bit more building that into our local development plan the next time around it's not an immediate solution but it is starting to build it much more into the planning process it's been suggested by colleagues that possibly the planning act could do more than that and that while there's some things in there open space as a whole is much stronger play is much stronger other things are much stronger than food itself so perhaps there's an opportunity to look under the new framework as to how that could be strengthened historically we've not had a huge success in actually bringing forward food growing sites through planning which is disappointing to say the least in a period of significant growth for Aberdeen over the last 10-15 years to not have those sites is a missed opportunity but like I've said if we can look again at how we manage that planning process and how we can manage things like local place plans and engage with communities to understand that there are opportunities that they can build into this around food and locality plans and so on to try and strengthen that approach that gets built into the next local development plan it's all well and good putting it in policy we also have to deliver it to developers and others to actually bring forward sites and there's a bit of education there around our planners for development management but also the developers to bring forward those sites within the planning process just to touch on one point there as well that may be expanding where Sinclair was and it's just round about where developers are bringing forward growing sites that perennial question round about maintenance and revenue after it's been handed over still remains consideration of that and the planning policies would be crucial I would suggest Sandy, just taking back to the visits yesterday I'm understanding that Glasgow is going to add a further 250 growing spaces correct me if I've got that figure wrong but can you expand on that maybe can you tell me how many traditional allotments and how many growing spaces? The 259 plots that we're looking to add through the iteration of this food growing strategy we're looking at each electoral ward within the city so that's 23 electoral wards that we're looking to adapt growing spaces within some of them will be on pre-existing sites where the space isn't utilised to its maximum efficiency some of them will be on new sites and some of them will be in vacant and derelict land each of the growing formats that will be utilised will be determined essentially by the site that we develop so if it's an allotment generally be a traditional allotment site if it's on vacant and derelict land and other contamination issues it may very well be that it's a raised bed format accessible raised bed format and if it's new sites it will generally be traditional allotment format as well but we're also looking at the mixture of more of a blend of the community aspects within allotments as well allotments to a certain degree have been scyloed in as much as it's allotments for individuals but there isn't a community arises from that there's a community place there and there's a community experience as well and that leads to other developments of community and while it might not be everybody's cup of tea to go to a 250m2 plot they might be looking for something a bit less restrictive, less rigid there is space within allotments sites for that and within the grow chapel site which is the newest site we've opened there is certainly consideration of that there is plots for individuals there's plots for organisations small starter plots medium plots, larger plots which allows a life cycle to develop an introductory grower comes in it's starting a small plot, they prove their case there they may have obtained that in your plot that's also led to an increased demand in the city for urban farming as well and that's something we're currently exploring we're an economic development team and our partners in Glasgow community food network so we're also looking at vertical growing using technological solutions from an organisation called INGS who have a research and development strand up at the James Houghton Institute in Invergowrie there's a massive mosaic of different growing techniques that we're keen to explore in Glasgow in developed so it will be a blend of all of those, it won't just be traditional allotments, it will be community gardens and I'll be technologically led innovations as well as the regenerative agriculture approach in urban farming that we're looking at for the site that brings us to the end of our questions and a very useful discussion and I think that one of the things that's really come out both in this panel but also this morning's earlier panel for me is this piece of let's get people started younger and how can we really hardwire this into the education system so that we know at the moment we're having to kind of one of the things I'm hearing is people are faced with a large plot they don't really know what to do with but they have that impulse so if we can get that going in the schools I think that would be more consistently and I think one of the challenges I know from when I was working in the past one of the challenges is summer holidays when suddenly you're at peak growing period and there's nobody there to water the vegetable plot so anyway thanks so much for joining us this morning it has been very useful and as that was the last public item on our agenda today I now close the public meeting