Will I be paying too much?

Our local council(the last in mainland Scotland to do so) have finally set the wheels in motion for an allotment site and I've been lucky enough to be asked if I'd like one. This after at least 5 years waiting. The plots will be approx 80m2 with communal storage, a toilet and several standpipes for water supply. There is also to be a compost area, again communal as far as I can make out. Info is sketchy at best and getting it is like pulling teeth. For this we are being asked to pay £100 per year. Is this too much? I know of a site in Edinburgh where they pay £80 but their plots are more than 3 times the size at 250m2. I'd like some views on this if you'd be so kind. Cheers.
p.s. Half the available plots are to be used for community projects and myself and others believe that the price we are being asked to pay is to help offset part of the cost of this venture.

 

Think of it like this, £100 per year is less than £2 per week. You'll never be able to find land to rent that cheaply anywhere in the UK certainly, except an allotment site.

 

£1.92pw with free toilets, standpipes and storage

Ask the other two hundered waiting IF they would be willing to take your place ?

Jack McH

 

Go for it

 

Allotment rents vary masssively up and down the whole of the UK and from what I have seen bear no resemblance to the next site in any way, sometimes they differ on the same site. What is included also varies, for example some sites have stand pipes, some have dip tanks and some sites have no water supply at all.

As others above this post have said, take the plot if you want it but I would not worry needlessly about the rent as some sites pay double what yours are.

Steve...

 

Many allotment tenants get upset by large (££££££s or just percentage wise) increases with no corresponding increase in facilities, and that £100 for 80m2 is nearly almost 4x as expensive per m2 compared to the other site you mention, but being a new site will probably be expensive to set up and if comparing it to the weekly cost of 80 m2 at the other site you mention it's 'only' £1.43 a week more pro-rata.

I pay 1p/m2 p.a. for some land that has no water or any other facilities whatsoever (other than an entrance gate), so that would cost 80 pence p.a. for 80m2. That may sound ridiculously cheap (and it probably is), but when comparing it on a weekly basis to £100 for 80m2, you'd be paying 'only' £1.91 a week more and you're getting storage, toilet facilities and water (parking? secure site?). During a week in (a proper hot) summer I can spend far more than £1.91's worth of my time filling up water containers, loading them in my car, driving them to my plot and emptying them into barrels. I also have the cost of fencing it off to keep rabbits out.

An allotment rent survey:
http://www.farmgarden.org.uk/ari/documents/APSE_survey_2012.pdf

 

Cheap at twice the price compared to a gym, lots of exercise and probable edible produce as an end result too?

 

And all without the hassle of having to wipe someone else's sweat off the equipment before you use it. And you don't even have to witness sweaty people posing at themselves in the mirror.

 

Training at sea was free and done most nights
Here is a lonely tankerman (They only get off the ship every twelve weeks, a bit like sludgemariners)



Jack McH

 

So he's not ambidextrous then?

 

Being a bit of a rebel I'd like to disagree with the other peeps but I'm not going to lol. Like Vince said you'll be getting exercise and cheap veg so I think £100 pa is a bit of a bargain even if other allotments are even bigger bargains! And if it helps the site and secures it for the future that's a price worth paying in my opinion .