HEXTABLE & SWANLEY: Councils accused of losing the plot in allotment row (From News Shopper)

HEXTABLE & SWANLEY: Councils accused of losing the plot in allotment row

10:30am Sunday 7th February 2010

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AN ALLOTMENT keeper has blasted two councils for using her as a “pawn” and letting politics prevent her from remaining on her plot.

For the second time in two years, 49-year-old Christine Ford, of Claremont Road, Hextable, has been told she is to be turfed off the allotment she has tended for 12 years near Swanley Park.

The creation of Hextable Parish Council in April 2008 resulted in council boundaries being moved, which meant Mrs Ford was no longer classed as a Swanley resident, and therefore under Swanley Town Council rules was no longer eligible for an allotment in the area.

At the time notice was given by Swanley telling the mother-of-two she had to give up her plot for Swanley residents on a waiting list for an allotment.

However an agreement was reached between Hextable Parish Council and Swanley Town Council to allow Mrs Ford to keep her plot, providing Hextable paid the costs of her allotment.

Now following a letter in News Shopper last month from Swanley Town Council leader Councillor Robert Woodbridge, Hextable has given notice to Swanley saying Mrs Ford will quit her plot.

In the letter (Parish council has allot of work to do, Jan 6), Cllr Woodbridge criticises Hextable for not providing allotments for its residents, despite having had nearly two years to do so.

He wrote: “(Hextable Parish Council) seems content to let its residents have allotments in Swanley parish. However this will not go on forever.

“If Hextable residents want their own allotments they can ask their parish council to provide them.”

In Mrs Ford’s response, she said: “Yet again I find I have been treated as a pawn by these two councils.

“Both Swanley and Hextable councils have let me down and it seems my gardening pleasure will be taken away because politics has got in the way.”

But when contacted by News Shopper, Cllr Woodbridge said: “Swanley Town Council doesn’t want to take her allotment away.

“If Hextable withdraws the notice she can stay.”

Councillor Dee Morris, deputy chair of Hextable Parish Council, said: “They can’t keep messing us about. In his letter it states this can’t go on.”

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