Praise for Brent Allotments and Food Growing Service

Brent allotments and food growing service has had a well deserved dollop of praise from of all people Martin Francis.  What Martin either doesn't realise, or fails to mention, is that the progress of the last three years was made by the change of leadership from the previous Tory/Liberal Democrat administration in Brent Council to the Labour one.

Back when Labour were in opposition, allotments were essentially ignored.  The waiting lists got longer and longer, and the service just drifted along.  As a result of this, the Labour Party decided this would need to be addressed if we formed an administration.  We therefore had an extensive data gathering process and consultation resulting in the first comprehensive strategy on Brent allotments since goodness knows when.

As usual, Martin had a hostile take on this effort at the time.

This shouldn't be the end of the matter, as food growing should be well placed to slot in with the Council's new responsibilities for public health.  In other words, we should continue to examine this area and make changes as the Council and Society at large continues to change, rather than just assuming that all change is automatically bad.  It also illustrates that if you want to make positive changes, you often have to stick with it for a while before you start to see results.

I guess the final message I would take from all this is the importance of political choice, which appears to be denied by Martin Francis in his comment on a recent blog of mine.  As I understand it, the allotments was badly run down in the 1990s.  There was no allotments officer and no funding.  Whatever sites there were were, whenever possible, sold.  That was a choice by the then Tory administration under Bob Blackman.  The Labour administration came in as a minority in 1996, and then with a majority from 1998.  As part of Paul Daisley's drive for a value for money Council the allotments service had a consultation to determine priorities, appointed an allotments officer to manage the service, and put in capital investment from time to time to deliver improvements.  Again that was a choice by a Labour administration that another administration might not have made.  Paul Lorber's administration came to power in 2006, and chose to drift on this and other issues.  Again, that was a choice.  When I became Lead Member in 2010, Labour had decided to sort out this drifting service.  Again, we could have ignored it and let things drift, but we chose to make things happen.  The changes that Martin now welcomes are the result of a Labour Council deciding to devote attention to a public service because we believe in public services in a way the Tories and Liberal Democrats do not.

UPDATE

Responding to the comment, I just believe in accountability. You can see that in my recent comments on (for example) Eric Pickles, Iain Duncan Smith, Cllr Paul Lorber and others.  It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether what people say today is compatible with what they said previously.  I have  never complained about myself or anyone else in the Labour Party being held to these standards.  Why shouldn't they apply to other parties or campaign groups?