EVENWOOD Parish Council is considering options to save an allotment site that has served the village for more than a century.
Copeland Row allotments were started shortly after the First World War, partly to help soldiers returning from the battlefields.
The future of the allotments became uncertain when agents for Tapton Estates, which owns the land, announced earlier this year they would not be renewing the lease.
At that time the parish council asked to buy the land for £5,000.
Allotment holders arrived en masse at the council’s March meeting where chairwoman Barbara Nicholson vowed to fight for their rights.
At that time she said: “I think that we should ask the new owners to give this land, or find an alternative site, or give us a new lease at a reasonable rent, or give the parish council time to find the money to buy it. Those are the options I would like to put to them.”
H&H Land, acting on behalf of Tapton Estates, have since offered the council an opportunity to buy the land for £15,000.
The parish council met allotment holders last week to explain the new offer.
Parish clerk Martin Clerk said if the council was to buy the land it would also have to pay legal and surveyors’
fees.
He added: “With the fees from both sides this would be nearer £20,000. This is a large sum for the council to find but, after discussions with the allotment holders, the council has gone back to them [the agents] to say that it is possibly interested in the offer put forward.”
H&H Land and the owners have since been invited to the parish council’s meeting on July 9.
Cllr Nicholson said: “Tapton Estates should be looking to gift that land to this village, especially after 101 years.”
