Clashes over “solving the allotment crisis” in Sheffield come to a head

An allotment company has criticised Sheffield City Council after losing an appeal for planning permission for one of its sites.

Roots Allotments, which operates around 20 sites across England, took to Instagram and its mailing list on August 2, saying Sheffield City Council had ordering Roots to “rip out allotments” at Station Pastures in Ecclesfield, its newer Sheffield site which has been open for just over a year.

Sheffield Council rejected an application for retrospective planning permission for an access track and shipping containers, once the site was already operational.

The allotment plots themselves do not require planning permission.

Councillor Alexi Dimond, chair of Sheffield Council’s Transport, Regeneration and Climate Committee, said: “The application was refused because of concerns about its impact on the openness and character of the green belt, highway safety issues, and the applicant’s failure to demonstrate that the development would avoid harm to biodiversity and would deliver biodiversity net gains to mitigate the impact on local nature.”

The council served an enforcement notice requiring the removal of unauthorised development, including shipping containers and hardstanding, which Roots has appealed.

Christian Samuel, founder of Roots said: “My intention is to solve the allotment crisis. Which is a crisis. The fact that people are waiting 13 years, five years, six years, two years, even a year, in my opinion, is too long. Because you only get one growing season a year.”

He claimed there are 2,000 people on the waiting list for a council allotment in Sheffield.

Mr Samuel said: “I just think it’s sad to shut down an entire project, so when I say that they’re ripping down allotments, they aren’t in essence, but they’re taking everything away that makes the allotments feasible for usage.”

Susan Davidson, a resident who lives near the Ecclesfield site, claimed Roots operates a “build first, ask for permission later” approach, which Mr Samuel has denied.

He said: “We build and then get the council to take a view. The majority of councils are really positive about what we’re doing.”

Ms Davidson said local residents to the Ecclesfield site are most concerned about entrance to the site, which she claims is unsafe.

She said: “When I say it’s invisible, I really do mean it’s invisible.

“It is an extremely narrow stretch of road, that is 60 miles an hour, just after a blind bend, on a known accident hotspot.”

She claimed with upwards of 400 plots, there will be hundreds of people coming daily, but Mr Samuel said: “I understand the concern, but what I would say back is we generate very, very little traffic. That entrance was there before. We only take sites that already have established entrances.”

Mr Samuel argued: “That’s what frustrates me about this north Sheffield site. The south Sheffield site [called Bowshaw Views in Dronfield] literally required no planning.”

However, Ms Davidson said: “The Dronfield site is completely different.

“It has a completely different type of access and visibility. It has a completely different landscape impact. It has a completely different impact on any local residents. To try and claim a comparison is totally misleading.”

Mr Samuel said he understood the concerns with the Station Pastures access and said: “We will work with the council to make it as good as possible.”

He said he will not give up on his mission, and said that if he did things “the way the anti-roots movement wanted,” each site could cost an extra £100,000 like his first controversial site in Bristol, which would make the business unviable.

He said: “I stand firm that we are doing this the correct way to try and solve the problem.

“People can say as much as they like about Roots,” he said. “But people call this their second home. They call it their place of respite. We get members that join because their autistic children have a place to come and find a place of peace. We have members that have just lost their family members and used this as their recovery process.

“It’s sad in a way that we are met with such disdain. We’ve not been perfect. I’ll be the first to admit that, and a lot of the problems are my own doing, in some respects. But it’s the only way it’s going to work.

“If I was here for profit I would have quit and gone elsewhere. But this is also legacy, solving a major problem, doing something that inspires hopefully many more people to have a positive ripple effect on the planet, and solve these wider issues and fight for what’s right by using the tools and the systems that we have.

“Hopefully, one day, 10 years from now, people will look back and go, thank god those bunch of crazy idiots fought on.”