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Letter from: Andrew Colquhoun, Judy Clark and Peter Driver, Hastings and St Leonards Allotment Federation

We welcomed the article in last week’s Observer by Cllr Julia Hilton about green spaces at the end of which she argued for a planning obligation for community growing for the draft Local Plan. As she pointed out, this is an approach being adopted elsewhere in the country by planning authorities.

As the Hastings and St Leonards Allotment Federation, this is an issue which we raised with the previous council leader and Cllr Maya Evans back in March and received a sympathetic response, with officers asked to do some preparatory drafting on this idea.

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Allotments in the town have an unprecedentedly long waiting list. Issues of food poverty are probably exacerbating this situation. We realise that it would be unrealistic to expect the council to provide resources to create new allotment sites to help local people grow more of their own food.

Rather, we need to look elsewhere for sources of land for food growing, hence our pressing for the Local Plan to include a planning obligation which might be used to encourage housing developers to provide land for communal growing.

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Community food growing should be a planning requirement in Hastings