Help couple pay for clean-up charges (From News Shopper)

Help couple pay for clean-up charges

I AM writing in regard to the article Couple Fail To Pay For Plot Clean-up (News Shopper, February 22) describing how Pieter and Rita Grootendorst were charged £2,270 by Bexley Council to clear their allotment plots,which were forcibly closed down.

There can be no doubt this amounts to a punitive fine levied on them because they were vocal in opposing the now discredited allotment strategy led by councillors Joel Briant and Chris Ball.

This thinly-disguised land grab was eventually defeated by the efforts of many in the allotments movement and thus we still retain the part of the green belt which would have been sold off.

To pick on the Grootendorsts in this way is nothing other than petty spite against perhaps the most vulnerable of us.

I am asking, through the News Shopper, if people will help raise the money. I'm up for the first £20. Just tell me where I can send it.

A J (Toby) Clark, Grazeley Close, Bexleyheath