My allotment rent bill arrived today and it’s gone up to £20..00 per plot. Now this might not seem huge although my plots are smaller than the norm. The national standard 10 rod plot is about 250 square metres and my plots are nearer 150 square metres.
Back in 2002 when I took on plot 5 the rent was £15.50 per annum and allowing for inflation using the RPI it should now be standing at just under £18.00 per annum. So the rent is about 11% higher than general inflation.
Now I know that allotments have become more popular and are attracting more middle class people so perhaps they figure that we can afford to pay more. Supply and demand. It’s not as if we have a choice and we certainly don’t have more facilities. If we did, I’d put my 11% towards more police patrols. These sneaky small increases really do annoy me.
Even more so, this brings home the effects of inflation. House prices in the UK have outstripped wage and general price inflation A house we purchased for £12,000 in 1976 would be worth £52,000 in today’s money but is going for over £200,000 now. This inflation is why we never managed to buy a smallholding, We couldn’t save up fast enough to compensate for the compound inflation in property prices.
For us born in the 1950s and early 1960s it does have an interesting effect. We find ourselves with saving plans, mortgage endowments and pension plans that just aren’t going to pay out what they promised at the start. What we do have is a house, assuming we got on the property ladder early enough, that is worth far more in real terms than what we paid.
So to retire, the obvious thing to do is to sell out and buy or rent a cheaper place to live using the acquired capital to live on. This does assume we will die before the money runs out. Moving down market is not an attractive prospect. Often the cheap houses are in areas we don’t want to live – that’s why they are cheap.
The answer is to move abroad. Prices in France and Spain are lower, Bulgaria is dirt cheap if you can settle there. No wonder half a million (yes half a million) Brits move out each year.
But what about our children? A starter home costs £100,000 upwards in many parts of the country. Do we spend their inheritance? Give it to them and hope they won’t put us into a cheap nursing home when the time comes?
Perhaps they will chuck it in and join us in the good life in sunnier climbs. Will the last Britain please leave the lights on and we’ll let the immigrants have the place.
Allotmenteers from the early to mid 19th century will be shaking their heads in the graves as we debate that well-worn topic that is the allotment rent.
In their day the annual rent was roughly the equivalent of one week’s pay for a plot that was up to a quarter of an acre .. and there were still long waiting lists .. and remember that we are generally talking about the poorest sections of society.
Using that basis and the current average weekly wage figure I estimate that the rent of a single 10 pole plot would now be around £115.
Oh .. and no water of course .. and the plot will be an average of 3/4 mile away from your home .. and needless to say you will have to walk there
After getting my allotment rent reminder I have been looking through allotment rents on various sites, as a pensioner who normally gets 50% concession I find this has now been stopped and my new rent will be £52.00 I am not too happy about this I have developed this plot from a derelict site 29 years ago
and now this, I propose to contest but don’t suppose this will do any good.
Bill Middlesbrough
I can’t believe how cheap allotment rents are! I should have listed ages ago. Compared to the cost of buying veggies every week, allotment rent is just pennies….