A plan to create 700 new allotment plots next to Leigh Woods in what would be Bristol’s first commercial allotments have been criticised by local councillors, who say the idea should have to go through the planning process. Bristol Live revealed last week that a new company called Roots were planning to turn a field on the corner of the A369 Portishead road and the entrance to Leigh Woods in Abbots Leigh, near Bristol, into a 20-acre allotments site.
The company - a group of four young environmentally-minded entrepreneurs - have already set up and opened a smaller site on the edge of Bath, which is believed to be the country’s first commercially-run allotments that aren’t set up by a local authority or an allotments community association.
Earlier this year, Bristol Live revealed that, as the site in Bath opened for the first time, Roots had plans to open a site in Bristol, where waiting lists for local authority-run allotment plots can be anything from 18 months to five years or more.
