With the availability of new housing stock now at crisis point it is time for some radical thinking, and by this I mean thinking the unthinkable.

There are approximately 260,000 allotments up and down the country that are currently available to rent in Brighton & Hove for the princely sum of £37.31 per year.

Typically an allotment covers 250sq.m. and on two you could build a four bedroom house! It does not take too much arithmetic to establish how many thousands of new houses could be built on the total number of allotments available.

To enable this it would require the repeal of the Small Holdings and Allotment Act 1908 which in essence requires local Councils to have a “statutory and obligation/ duty to provide land to be used as allotments when six or more council tax payers make a request and to acquire land for that purpose”. As to its relevance today that begs the question as to where our priorities lie and a one which will of course provoke an outcry from the pro-allotment lobby.

Just a thought.

Robin Tulley

Honey Croft

Hove