Sir, – At the start of National Allotments Week (August 4 -11) it was encouraging to read in your paper the article by Hannah Stephenson (Weekend Gardening Aug 1) on the benefits which allotments have for communities and her advocacy of local people coming together to resist the loss of allotment land to ‘development’.

Quite rightly she points out the value of locally grown food, healthy soil, high biodiversity, historical value and the contribution which allotments make to social networks, sense of place and cohesive communities.

Here in Bedale we have an allotments site behind Masham Road occupying land which was given to the local church some 170 years ago. Archive maps show the land as being Allotment Gardens in the 1830s and it has been used for that purpose ever since. Generations of gardeners have each worked what is now one of the oldest allotment sites in the country and have gradually enriched the soil’s fertility.

Positioned within the community the site is easily accessible and is enjoyed by a good cross section of gardeners including, importantly, young families and their children.

For others the site provides a valued area of interest and green space, one of the few remaining in an increasingly built up Bedale. For these reasons, and more, the Town Council successfully had the site declared a Site of Community Value in 2013, by Hambleton District Council.

While the local church of St. Gregory’s supports the retention of the Masham Road Allotments its governing body, until recently the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds, has sought to sell off the land and relocate the allotments to a far less accessible site out of town. The ‘super diocese’ of West Yorkshire and the Dales is the new governing body of church affairs in Bedale and we wait to find their view on "sell or not to sell allotment land in Bedale".

For more than 20 years, members of Bedale Allotments Association have resisted efforts by the Diocesan Board of Finance to move them off the site. While the allotments support the community in so many ways, the stance taken by the Diocese undermines the ambitions which members have for their own plots and for the site as a whole. Given the cooperation of our landlord and a long term tenancy there is so much more to be achieved from this community space.

Bedale Allotments Association is campaigning to keep the allotments on their present site and launched a petition to that effect in July. Many hundreds of local people have already added their signatures.

If only the Church would listen to the communities it avows to support.

BRUCE STAINSBY

Member, Bedale Allotments Association