The Association spent a whole year, starting in April 2000, fighting off Notices to Quit served by Lewisham council so they could develop the land. This article, which appeared in the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners' Journal in 2001 after we won our fight is reproduced here to offer encouragement to other allotment societies facing the same threat.
Now the threat has been lifted, now the Notices to Quit have been withdrawn, we have time to look back at the last year's battle with the council and see what went right and what went wrong.
First some background. The Association rents nineteen plots from Lewisham Council. The plots are in two groups of twelve and seven, surrounded on all sides by buildings and divided from each other by a strip of about five houses. Forming one boundary of the seven-plot site is the perimeter of the local leisure centre, still well used but neglected and overdue for refurbishment.
The Metropolitan Police have for some years wanted to build a new police station, stables and offices in Lewisham. Their first preference was the site of a former department store in the High Street. Although long acknowledged by all the residents in the borough as the location for the new police station, for reasons of their own the council took against this scheme and wanted them to build on the leisure centre site.
The first we knew of the troubles ahead was a Notice to Quit fixed to a stake on each of the seven plots on 6 April last year - no prior consultation, no letter to the Secretary, nothing. We then went through a year of arguing with the council on our own behalf while the police fought and won a Department of the Environment planning appeal which overruled the council's refusal to let them use the High Street site. We then had to wait a further six months while the police formally signed a contract to start building during which time the council refused to withdraw the Notices in case the contract fell through. Two days before they were due to take effect the Notices were withdrawn and our seven plots, by now neglected, overgrown and in four cases untenanted were safe.
So what did we do that others might perhaps find useful when their turn comes?
Get the local paper involved - we thought our paper was heavily biased towards stories from the other side of the borough. When we talked to their reporter we realised that was the only place which sent them stories. All local papers are desperate for a good story and in the end we got front page headlines with a big picture and an accurate story - accurate because we gave them a detailed briefing note and a list of people (including the NSALG) to approach for quotes.
Get your elected representatives on side - we were lucky to have the leader of the Green Party (who is also Mayor of London Ken Livingstone's environmental adviser) as a former plotholder, so he was an obvious choice. Our local MP wrote a letter and gave the paper a supportive quote. The ward councillors were a waste of space - one just acknowledged our letter and two ignored it - we shall remember them at the elections.
Play the environmental card - healthy pursuits, chemical free produce, a haven for wildlife, you know the arguments as well as I do. I have to say though that collectively and individually the members of the council-sponsored Biodiversity Partnership were also useless. I receive the minutes of their meetings and despite their earnest discussion of threatened habitat and loss of green space in the borough none of them mentioned our letters or our site.
Be seen - at least one of us went to each day of the appeal hearing. It wasn't our fight and we weren't invited to speak but the council realised we were still there in the background.
Link up with other interested parties - we didn't do very well at this. Many local residents were concerned about the consequences of having a fifteen-foot wall with police dogs (barking) and horses (smells) at the end of their tiny gardens but we didn't really join forces with them. Other people were concerned that the leisure centre would be demolished and no replacement provided. We could have got them on our side too but didn't.
Keep at them - if you don't get an answer in a reasonable period write and ask for a response. If a decision seems to be taking a long time, write and ask why. All public bodies have some sort of guaranteed response time for letters and it does no harm to remind them you won't go away.
Go to the top - the borough's Deputy Mayor found it difficult to ignore the problem and leave it to his officials because a letter dropped on his desk every couple of weeks asking him what was going on.
Make contingency plans - we knew that the council's offers of alternative plots would come to nothing (as it turned out most were several miles away) so we arranged voluntary plot sharing on our twelve plot site just to keep the members' interest alive until things were resolved one way or the other. I'm still not sure what we would have done if the Notices to Quit had not been withdrawn. Early on one member suggested we chain ourselves naked to the gates of the threatened plots - in London 6 April 2001 was damp and chilly so she was probably pleased this idea was not adopted.
Don't give up - obvious but easy to do. And if you win say thank you to those who supported you and then try to screw something out of the council for the grief they've given you - we persuaded them to rotavate the seven plots which had become overgrown over the last year. I'm still thinking about asking for a rent rebate. Perhaps that would be pushing our luck.
Finally don't forget the NSALG - an invaluable source of information, advice and experience. We appreciated their support during the last year.
Over a philosophical G and T the other evening it suddenly occurred to me that as things turned out the notices to quit might still have been withdrawn if we had done absolutely nothing - but you can't just let them get away with it can you?
Best wishes and good fortune to those other plotholders who are currently facing the same threat. Our thoughts are with you.