Crawley's allotments

6.05.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 16th Apr 2007

Northgate Councillor Gordon Seekings is a keen gardener and has always taken a close interest in Crawley's allotments - going back to 1990 when he raised the issue of the availability and the record keeping of Crawley's allotments with the Borough Council. Now it seems that although the record keeping is good there are still questions to be answered as to how Crawley Borough Council provides this service - and especially so when they admit they do no advertising (other than word of mouth) to encourage use of vacant ones.

Although allotments provide a way of growing your own favourite healthy food (and are a good way to help keep fit whilst in good company) the fact is that many allotment sites in Crawley need improvement. There are now less allotments than there were in 1990 and some of Crawley's neighbourhoods do not have any at all. In some areas of the town allotment sites are oversubscribed and have long waiting lists - and yet others have plenty of vacant spaces.

As a result of the original questions Gordon raised in 1990 he wrote an article in the "Northgate FOCUS" newsletter he edits on them. This was picked up by both of Crawley's newspapers and Sussex's "Evening Argus". Gordon ended up being invited to appear on one of the gardening programmes on the then BBC Radio Brighton to speak about them!

Gordon does not expect anything like that to happen this time but he will continue to fight for more and better allotments for Crawley.