Selfsufficientish.com

Hi,

I've recently took on an allotment and am loving taking the first steps to self sufficency. But Ive noticed two things one is that there are massive waiting lists on allotments and the other is that some land sells relatively cheaply at about 1K/acre. If I were to save up for ages I could buy a field. Would I have to apply for planning permission to change the land use from agriculture to allotments? A lot of conflicting info out there when I googled it.

Paul

Hi Paul, I reckon you would have to be very determined to do it. I battled for years with our Parish council to get allotments for our village,there was always some problem about the usage of pieces of land. You could build houses but not grow veg! Finally I was on the point of giving up and digging up the lawn, when a a local farmer "gave" us a field. We have 20 allotments on it, and have to keep all the hedges in good order, and it is going really well. We are only a small village and have a waiting list. Good luck. pbf.

Interesting.

I had always thought that if you are growing veg, then it's agricultural usage, would an allotment be deemed different?

I can understand it taking time for a local authority to give up some small area of land for allotments (when they could possible sell it off ) - but if a private individual had bought some land is there any legal opposition for them to hand that land over as usage for allotments?

pbf, do you know what the local farmer had to do legally to allow for allotments?

prison break fan wrote:Hi Paul, I reckon you would have to be very determined to do it. I battled for years with our Parish council to get allotments for our village,there was always some problem about the usage of pieces of land. You could build houses but not grow veg! Finally I was on the point of giving up and digging up the lawn, when a a local farmer "gave" us a field. We have 20 allotments on it, and have to keep all the hedges in good order, and it is going really well. We are only a small village and have a waiting list. Good luck. pbf.

Yeah ideally what I would do is get the parish council on board before I even bought any land. Hopefully find somewhere where theres a lot of people on an allotment waiting list and get them to back me. I need to do a lot more research into this before I go spending any cash. I like to dream and fantasise Ive allready pictured my wildlife pond/ Orchard/ free range hens/wood store/ giant composting facilities ect.