A new campaign is seeking to push the council to free up its land for allotments and cut red tape around community gardens

By the Waltham Forest Right to Grow Campaign

A few years ago, Donna, in her 50s, recovering from breast cancer, was in a very dark place. Estranged from her family, disconnected from her community, hers was just one story among the 700,000 Londoners who experience ‘severe loneliness’, or the 2.5 million who
experience loneliness regularly.

To see Donna now makes it hard to believe she was suffering so much so recently. She is a pillar in her community, active in her local church again, and a warm, kind presence towards everyone. What happened? For one, she joined a local community garden.

Community gardens can change people’s lives. They connect people with wildlife, neighbours and teach us that we can change the
world for the better. The combination of light physical activity, low-stakes sociability, and the feeling that you are needed rebuilds self-esteem and rekindles hope for the future. For every £1 spent on community gardening, it saves the NHS £5.

This connection to land, people and self is not a luxury but a right. Everyone deserves the right to grow food on public land
which is not otherwise in use. This is the core demand of the national ‘Right to Grow’ campaign and a key part of the Waltham Forest Right to Grow Campaign.

We have a particular context here. With over 50 community food growing projects in the borough we already have a thriving movement. There are plenty of supportive voices in the council, who have helped many of these projects get off the ground, but there is a lack of an overall strategy to support food growing.

As a result, many projects have suffered at the hands of distracted, or simply obstinate, council officers across departments. Because community food growing does so much, from addressing health inequality, access to food, to climate resilience and biodiversity, this is an own goal for the council.

That’s why over the next year, the Waltham Forest Right to Grow campaign will be stepping up pressure on the council to take food growing seriously and remove bureaucratic obstacles. What we want is a commitment to a food growing strategy which includes: a process for community groups to access land to grow food on, a small start-up pot of funding for those groups, and a community food growing officer to be a point of contact.

Peculiarly, the council spent thousands developing a food strategy in the last few years, only to shelve it once it was completed. The plans to help people grow food in their homes, in small parts of local parks and in schools were ambitious and necessary.

However, because there has been no coordinated plan, many community food growers have had to navigate confusing relationships with the council. From the residents at Tenby Court randomly losing funding the council had awarded them, to the Our Pastures community garden being repeatedly stonewalled over their efforts to improve a water feature in their garden.

Meanwhile many growing sites have faced confusing and uncertain conditions over their leases. Yet, despite this lack of co-ordination, there has clearly been intention to support people to grow food. The council has made important steps, from partnering with local growers to develop the food strategy, to administering grant funding to some local food projects.

Waltham Forest Right To Grow Campaign is calling for the council to keep its promises, and trust communities to take
care of their own land. With allotment waitlists numbering over 1000, people are clearly ready, spades in hand. Researchers at Lancaster University found that cities could produce as much as 40% of their own fruit and vegetables.

Long term, a right to grow could transform Waltham Forest. Unloved ‘grot spots’ and disused green spaces could become vibrant community gardens that connect people and provide access to free fruit and veg. Rather than waiting years for allotments, people like Donna could just start growing food without red tape and waitlists.

If you also believe in a Right to Grow in Waltham Forest get involved by going here

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