Waiting list for allotments in England almost doubles in 12 years

The Golden Hill Community Garden in Bristol. The longest waiting list for a local authority was in Bristol, which has 7,630 outstanding applications. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Alamy

There are few things so quintessentially English as the allotment, but the number of people waiting for a space of their own has almost doubled in the last 12 years.

The most recent figures, obtained by independent artists and supported by Greenpeace through freedom of information requests, show there are now at least 157,820 applications sitting on English local authorities’ allotment waiting lists, up 81% from 12 years ago when researchers found the figure was 86,787.