Oakham Home Gardens and Allotment Society
c/o 28 Cricket Lawns
Oakham
Rutland
LE15 6HT
Telephone: 01572 757153
Email: rosandrobbowley@btinternet.com
To our neighbours in Brooke Road, Cricket Lawns and Bowling Green Close
30 June 2015
Dear Neighbour
Brooke Road Allotments
You may have heard last year that the owner of Brooke Road allotments, Burley Estate Farm Partnership (BEFP), was intending to sell the allotments for development. Oakham Home Gardens and Allotment Society (OHGAS) which manages Brooke Road and three other sites in Oakham, has, since then, been in discussions with BEFP with the aim to stay on the site as long as possible, or, if evicted, to negotiate compensation for members.
Sadly, BEFP has recently confirmed they will be selling the site for development, subject to planning permission. BEFP has given OHGAS formal notice to quit the site by the end of October 2016. Discussions on compensation are continuing between OHGAS and BEFP.
Background
OHGAS currently rents Brooke Road on an annual basis. It is an informal arrangement, which roughly runs spring to spring for 12 months rental. For the past few years, we have been trying to agree a long term formal lease with BEFP but have not succeeded.
The Brooke Road allotment site, (with the other allotment sites in Oakham), is protected by the policies in Rutland County Council’s local plan and is a designated Important Open Space. This offers some protection from development and we assume this status will be taken into account when a planning application is submitted.
We have been told that when planning permission was controversially given for the Jeakins Weir houses off the Uppingham Road, it inevitably made Brooke Road allotments a target for development.
Irrespective of the local plan and any other political considerations, the land is not allotment land in the formal sense, ie. unlike all our other sites, it has no protection under the various Allotment Acts. Despite our near hundred year tenancy, starting with the Finch Estate (predecessors of BEFP), we have always been on a year’s notice.
The OHGAS committee and OHGAS members have carefully considered whether we should oppose the closure based on our historic tenure. We have members who have been on the site for up to fifty years and they and all the other plotholders are saddened and upset to be told they will have to leave plots they have cherished and cared for. We, as an organisation with responsibility for the maintenance of green spaces in Oakham, are concerned that there will be an irreplaceable loss of a unique natural habitat as the site is concreted over.
But OHGAS has decided it does not have the means to oppose eviction, and is not in a position to put up a fight. We have taken the pragmatic view to negotiate what can be salvaged from the sad affair.
Meanwhile we have offered all members at Brooke Road alternative allotments on other sites and several have already taken this opportunity. The remainder will maintain the allotments in good order until the leaving date.
Conclusion
We are very sorry this is happening. We appreciate that you, our neighbours, will probably be similarly unhappy with the prospect of more houses being built, and the noise and disruption that this will cause. We know that many of you will miss the loss of a tranquil piece of countryside within Oakham. Such losses can never be reversed.
Contacts for more Information
The local OHGAS site stewards for Brooke Road are Stan Townsend and Rob Bowley. Their contact details are below.
Martin Duncan
Acting Chairman OHGAS 30 June 2015
Contacts
Stan Rob
01572 755964 01572 757153
stantownsend@talktalk.net rosandrobbowley@btinternet.com
