Request for City of Edinburgh Council to re instate concessionary lets for community food growing

The council has complained about the cost of cutting grass and maintaining green deserts - here is an excellent opportunity to enable communities to enrich public land for their well-being and nourishment.

The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens supports this proposal. We work with more than twenty community growing projects in Edinburgh. Funding and access to land are the two biggest barriers to community growing. Tackling these barriers by reducing the rent the groups pay would increase the time, effort and money they could spend on running their projects and increase the huge social, environmental, health and economic benefits their work brings. For more information about these benefits, please see research on our website, www.farmgarden.org.uk

Land in any city environment is hard to come by for community groups - even harder for those that wish to grow food and learn through this process. Councils need to do all they can to support strong communities to use they land how they wish. They need to see the responsibility they hold as including food security education for all.

The Council really needs to be doing everything it can to promote and support community food growing projects. It can't afford not to!

CEC needs to be seen to support communities in tangible ways, like this

NourishScotland encourages the City of Edinburgh Council to encourage and support community growing

This really needs to happen!

it is of vital importance that people are able to grow food. It is not a luxury but a necessity

it's shameful how a welfare society, or supposedly what Scotland should be, is denied or sold the permission to grow food!

The council should be supporting community groups to use and improve land. In Glasgow they even have a grant to help local groups to develop 'stalled spaces' - keep up Edinburgh.

I am in support of this proposal. I understand that the rental charges are not meant to raise revenue for the Council but to cover the legal/staff costs of administering the leases. However, whilst the annual rents (£250-400/annum) may be small beer for the Council. This can be a significant amount for a small community group to raise each year, and a sum which would be much better spent by the groups themselves rather than disappear as a drop in the ocean in the Councils finances. As described by others above, community food growing projects are widely recognised as having huge benefits in social, community and environmental terms for the residents of Edinburgh. They tend to be self-managed and once established, not a drain on Council resources. With the budget constraints the Council faces, it should be minded to support community led initiatives wherever possible, as they deliver Council objectives for a fraction of the cost of equivalent council led projects. These rentals act as a barrier to establishing new community food growing projects, or threaten the sustainability of existing ones. The Council should seek to revise their policies at the earliest opportunity. If they are stopped from doing so by Scottish Govt regulations, then they should also be changed. Thank you to the folk at Lochend for taking this on!

Lets do everything we can to get families and therefore children involved in growing picking and eating fresh food

With the need for growing in the City high and allotment waiting lists as congested as they are, growers are looking to create their own opportunities for food growing and re capturing these gardening skills as a society. As well as garden sharing, communities look to grow together and share waste land which would oherwise be grassed over, unattractive and not serve the community in that area. Concessionary lets is essential for community groups which inevitably will aid CEC in finding alternative growing opportunities for its residents.

It is extremely important that public land is used for community projects, and that the council supports this, by not charging rent. These community growing projects are of huge value to the local community and therefore to Edinburgh as a whole, and as such the value these projects input to Edinburgh should be recognised and the council should not then try to make financial gain from them!

Please reinstate concessionary lets. Growing food in our communities should be supported, not taxed! Play fair!

growing some of our own food should be encouraged, and any difficulties minimised.

Please re instate concessionary lets for community food growers in Edinburgh.

The Council should be encouraging residents to grow their own food and should not be putting obstacles in their way!

allotments and growing spaces should be free on public land

We need to have more local food production. Also this is a great opportunity to build community spirit and to improve the health and wellbeing of communities.