As the outgoing chairman of the New Barnet Allotment Society for the past six years, may I thank everyone I have worked with and express my concerns about plans to make allotment sites completely self-managing? Given that the effective care and maintenance of allotment sites requires comparatively tiny amounts of local authority funding for this statutory service, I am puzzled the Conservative administration is putting quite so much effort into trying to offload such modest legal responsibilities. Locally, it squandered money in Tudor Park on temporary fencing around the new children’s playground for several months before giving up and eventually building a permanent anti-golf ball fence for this hypothetical risk — more than the cost of providing proper fencing along the southern boundary of the Clifford Road allotments on land allocated to Cromer Road School. This remains undeveloped because the money allocated to rebuild the school was taken early and gambled on higher Icelandic interest rates than those charged for servicing this debt. Support from Barnet Council is required to deal with legal matters, including evictions, as allotment committees cannot be both judge and jury in such cases.

Failing plot holders can be very hard to shift. When all else fails, the threat of legal action is required, so others can have a chance to start growing their own vegetables, fruit and flowers, especially as plots for rent continue to be in high demand. Local authorities also have economies of scale to provide a fast, efficient and cheaper emergency repairs service — as when, for example, bolt-cutters were taken to two of our gates during the summer.

The Conservatives would do well to remember they only got around 42 per cent of the popular vote in May. While the Labour opposition may wish to crow about the unfairness of cuts driven by a bunch of ideologues, they should ask themselves why the single transferable vote in council elections was only introduced in Scotland. At least preference voting with several members elected for each ward in the same way as the proposed alternative vote system for Westminster elections would save local residents from this easyCouncil experiment. David Nowell, chairman of the New Barnet Allotment Society, Lytton Road, New Barnet