SWINDON Council has revealed plans to transfer management responsibility of allotments to a new association – but questions are being raised about whether the project would be workable.

Coun Fionuala Foley, cabinet member for Streetsmart and corporate services, and Richard Fisher, head of public protection and Streetsmart, say their preferred option is for a new association of all tenants to be set up to run the council’s 26 sites, which total about 1,200 plots.

The plans were drawn up after prospective plot holders complained about long waiting lists, which the council admits are one to two years on average, while existing tenants said that some plots were not tended for years because the council takes too long to evict sitting tenants.

The new association would lease allotment sites and take over the entire administration and management, including grounds maintenance, processing new tenant applications and agreements, managing waiting lists, undertaking site and plot inspections, issuing warning letters and notices to quit, invoicing for and collecting rents, and determining the level of rents.

The council spends £60,000 annually on allotments, including £30,000 on staff, which is covered through £12,000 from tenant rents and a £48,000 subsidy from council tax in non-parished areas. The new group would receive the rent income and some of the subsidy.

The council says there are some benefits to this new arrangement, including that vacant plots could be kept tidy and re-let quickly, but councillors question whether there is appetite among tenants for self-management, after a consultation of 1,250 plot holders resulted in only 12 responses, of which four were against.

Coun Foley said: “Maybe there’s an organisation that might have willing volunteers that might want to come together and put a proposal and say, ‘Actually ‘we’re interested, with a bit of support in the first year we can get this up and running’.”

But she warned there could be conflict if tenants managed their own allotments and said ultimately she would want to transfer all allotments to the organisation, rather than just a couple, to avoid a two-tier system.

Coun Foley said the council would contact the Swindon Allotments and Leisure Gardens Association to see whether it is interested in getting involved and will accept expressions of interest until June 2014, after which the status quo will be maintained if nothing comes forward.

Coun Cindy Matthews (Lab, Lydiard and Freshbrook) said it was a big ask for volunteers to take over all sites, suggesting a gradual transfer of responsibilities was preferable.

Don Reeve, treasurer of SALGA, said the group originally expressed an interest in taking over just Pickard’s Field but potentially could get involved in running all sites.

He said: “Swindon Council has lost about one third of its funding since 2010 and they simply cannot do all the things they did in the past. And this is something that reasonably can be managed by a mixed group of volunteers and perhaps an employee.”