Nimby Watch: Is Angela Rayner really coming for our allotments?

In this edition of Nimby Watch, we’re going to enjoy the simple things in life, and experience nature and horticulture all at the same time…

Okay then, which is the lucky county this time? Well, we’re going to start off in Storrington in West Sussex, which is one of several sites The Telegraph has identified is under assault from none other than Angela Rayner.

What’s she done now? Well, that’s the question. According to a neat bit of silly season mischief-making, she’s selling off allotments left, right and centre (but mostly left, surely) to build huge blocks of new housing, depriving the stout yeomen of Britain of a chance to grow their own food and stay connected to the natural world.

How outrageous! I’m appalled! Are you, though?

Not really, it just felt like the appropriate reaction at that point. Some people feel very strongly about allotments. Many sites are oversubscribed, with years-long waiting lists for people to be able to get hold of their own plot. Jeremy Corbyn is a fan, as The Telegraph knew when it stirred the pot on this issue with its latest story. For some, they’ve got a romantic connection right the way back to the agricultural commons, though the connection in reality is pretty tenuous.

So, what has Angela Rayner actually done, then? This is the thing – she’s done almost nothing. Allotments have special protections, which means the land on which they sit can’t be used for development without the approval of central government. Labour haven’t done anything to remove these protections, but like the Conservatives before them, occasionally approve plans involving new homes being built on some allotment sites.

That sounds an awful lot like she’s demolishing allotments so that greedy property developers can build homes. Maybe – but even the National Allotment Society isn’t all that worked up about this, having issued a statement debunking the story, not least because several of the sites in The Telegraph story were already in disuse, meaning that the argument against building is leaving the sites derelict in the hope a council might one day reopen them for use as allotments.

What about this site in Storrington, then? Why have you dragged me slightly out of London to West Sussex? Well, the allotments on this site aren’t disused, to be fair to The Telegraph – there have been proposals to build 78 homes here that have proceeded glacially slowly through the planning process since 2021, which do involve building over existing allotments which are still in use.

I know what you’re up to here, just get to the ‘but’ already. Okay, fine. The plans involve building a new, larger site that will contain more allotments than the existing one – and to make absolutely sure the developer can’t wriggle out of this promise, the old allotment land won’t be released until the new ones are up, running and approved by the council.

So… Storrington will end up with more allotments as a result of this new building, not fewer? Exactly. And despite that, getting planning approval has been agonising and must have cost a fortune. Just for relocating the allotments alone, a planning appeal had to consider whether moving some allotments a few hundred yards would change the character of South Downs National Park, whether it would alter the views of properties around them substantively and whether it would significantly alter water usage in the area, among all the other considerations.

Just to move some allotments? Yes. For every £100 million bat tunnel that hits the headlines, there are hundreds (or thousands) of projects like this being delayed, denied or just made more expensive because of endless considerations of this sort, which still do nothing to actually appease Nimbys when the project gets greenlit.

Perhaps we need a new, radical party to cast all of this aside. I hear that Jeremy Corbyn’s starting one? Yes, but this is Britain. Even our radicals are socially conservative. Corbyn’s as-yet-unnamed new party has said it won’t automatically go into alliance with the Greens because they’re ‘not radical enough’. But Corbyn himself obligingly wrote a letter to The Telegraph expressing outrage at the idea Angela Rayner might demolish a few allotments to help address the housing crisis. ‘Is this Government going to put the nail in the coffin of the joy of digging ground for potatoes on a cold, wet February Sunday afternoon?’

But no one digs potatoes in February – they’d have rotten in the ground by then, they can’t survive freezing conditions. Yes, either Corbyn doesn’t actually use his allotment or whoever ghosted his letter for him didn’t check with a gardener. But details clearly aren’t his thing – neither Corbyn nor his office stopped to think whether The Telegraph had their best interests at heart when asking them to write a letter, checked whether Labour changed its policies or checked what was going on with any of the allotment sites. 

Does it matter? At least a bit, yes: the Nimby coalition transcends traditional political boundaries and could soon be in the ascendancy. The Greens are longstanding Nimbys, and Corbyn’s new party is likely to be the same. Reform is unlikely to embrace a huge new housebuilding programme. The parties promising change are also the least likely to do anything that might deliver it. 

So, anyone who wants an end to the housing crisis is going to have to push for it, hard, and make themselves noticed to politicians. Even if it means – gasp – bulldozing a few allotments. Or even quite a lot of them, frankly.

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