Quiet For Some Time

Things have been quiet for some time. People have come and some have gone. The saddest of these was Robin our site secretary succumbing to cancer and finally dying of mesothelioma, also known as asbestosis. Whilst Robin was ill, Darren Lovelace the allotment contact at City of York Council (CYC)  asked for volunteers to take on the site secretary position but then decided he would look after it himself, many have said "not particularly well".

In the middle of last year City of York Council decided to outsource running of allotments to an outside organisation. After discussion and planning during the summer it was decided to form a charitable organisation to run the allotments who would administer the allotments, collect rents, pay a small sum to CYC and and arrange maintenance issues. This brought into being YACIO, York Allotments Charitable Independent Organisation who took over from the council at the start of the year. As was suspected YACIO took over records that in many cases were incomplete and inaccurate. In the meantime YACIO have decided that Glen allotments should have two site secretaries one female and one male. The two site secretaries are Selena Gee and Rob Vassey. Possibly a combination that could prove fairly immiscible, but so far seems to be moving along in a cooperative manner. One of the first tasks the site secretaries have to get in hand is a survey of who is on which plot and determine the plot sizes i.e. full, half or quarter as the current charts just show full plots and not the subdivisions. This will allow for bills to be accurate and to determine whether any plots are vacant and available for renting. The present waiting list for Glen allotments is 15 people.

Stephen and Tina have decided to give up their plot and have set up their back garden as a smaller scale vegetable plot but will probably drop in at the allotment from time to time.

In the next blog to come shortly I'll have some information on the history of Glen allotments. A friend of mine who has a plot at Hemplands has been researching the allotment there and has dug up some information related to Glen allotments related to it starting in 1917 (we missed out on celebrating the centenary).