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Do we like new £2m allotments? Not a lot
Tim Stewart, Evening Standard27 May 2008
More than £2 million of taxpayers' money has been spent relocating allotment holders from the Olympics site to waterlogged land where nothing grows.
Scores of gardeners were forced to give up 100-year-old plots in Hackney Wick, east London, to make way for a concrete concourse between Olympic stadia.
But a third of the 64 new plots in nearby Leyton, which were handed over last September, flood so easily that they cannot be cultivated. Gardeners on the remaining sites cannot grow anything.
A Freedom of Information Act request revealed former mayor Ken Livingstone's London Development Agency spent £2.3 million on the new site. The price included £1.8 million on construction, £172,000 on surveyor fees, £115,000 on legal costs and £89,000 on planning applications.
Each plot holder was paid compensation of £850 - a total of £62,000 - to relocate. But some gardeners are threatening to sue the LDA for further compensation because their new land is unusable. They also claim that the soil is "oddly sterile" and lacking in nutrients.
A confidential report by independent soil experts confirms there is "waterlogging across a significant proportion of the site".
The £4,000 report, commissioned by the LDA, says: "Since completion, significant areas of the site have fully saturated soil horizons or standing surface water.
"In addition, some allotment holders have reported considerable difficulty in undertaking hand cultivation due to the hardness encountered."
It suggests one of the main causes of the waterlogging is compaction caused by trucks driving over spread topsoil to deliver fresh loads when the site was being created. It recommends using a mechanical blade to de-compact the soil - work that is expected to run into thousands of pounds.
Julie Sumner, 47, from Hackney said that a third of the 64 plots were a "write-off " and that they were all affected.
She said: "Over 15 years, I reached the point where I was growing 50 different crops at the old site - everything from fig and plum trees to artichokes.
"My plot on the new site is the worst of all. It looks like a lunar landscape after any rain. There was water on the surface even after the heatwave earlier this month. Not even the weeds are growing."
An LDA spokesman said: "There was a significant issue with waterlogging. To compensate for this it was arranged that plot holders would not be charged rent for the first year.
"We would be prepared to consider compensation claims if disruption runs beyond this year. It all depends on the effectiveness of the remedial work."
Reader views (1)
It's appalling the way these allotment holders have been treated and fobbed off.
Before the allotments moved here there were always big puddles in the winter where the site is located. And it sounds like the protective membrane put down to prevent contaminating the soil is also preventing any drainage, but compacted soil isn't going to help either. Contractors in a rush to finish were seen to be driving all over the land.
Local residents weren't happy to loose access to the space the new allotments occupy, but it's rubbing salt into the wound to find that the evicted allotment holders can't even uses their plots!
- Local resident, Leyton, UK, 29/05/2008 14:52
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