The Parish Council have applied to Wiltshire Council under the Community Asset Transfer policy to have the allotments transferred to the Parish Councils ownership.
The Community Asset Transfer policy is to transfer to the community areas where the community value of such a transfer can be demonstrated to exceed the strategic value to the Council. Plus where the community can also show that the transfer would also achieve a specific benefit to the community. The waiting list for a plot is retained by the Parish Clerk and indicates that there is a definite need for an allotment site within the Parish.
There are many laws and regulations regarding allotments that state that they should be under the local jurisdiction of the Parish Council. ‘Regulation 10 Local Government (Parishes & Parish Council) Regulations 1999’, which is Statutory Instrument 1999/545 states, ‘The allotment land vests in the Parish Council’. The Parish Council is therefore under a reciprocal legal obligation to accept the allotment land, under consideration, from the District Council. The Parish Council applied to have the allotment site transferred to them in 2008 but Wiltshire Council where only prepared to give them the management of the site under a twenty five year lease.
The Parish Council feels the allotments are worth retaining and see them as not only a community asset but also as essential that the only remaining allotment site in the Parish is retained.