3. What support is the Welsh Government providing for community allotments? OQ58686

Llywydd, our allotment support grant has allocated £750,000 this year across local authorities to help improve and increase allotment provision. In addition to this dedicated fund, other programmes such as the community land advisory service also support the development of allotments.

I thank the First Minister for his reply. I've got allotments in my constituency that have benefited from the grants that have been available, but there are still very many people who want an allotment but cannot get one. The public sector in Wales, both Welsh Government sponsored bodies, the Welsh Government itself and local authorities, have land that they own but currently have no beneficial use for. Will the Welsh Government promote the use of such land to be used for allotments, rather than just being left there?

Well, Llywydd, I guess I ought to declare an interest in this question. I was on my own allotment on Sunday. If you're picking raspberries in the middle of November then you don't need anybody to tell you that climate change is not affecting us in every part of our lives.

I'm glad to hear what Mike Hedges said about the positive impact of the allotment support grant in Swansea. Across the whole of Wales, it's already in a small pilot and 18 months of the grant itself brought 760 new plots, or allowed plots that were in disuse to be renovated and brought back into use. I was especially interested to see that, in the Member's own constituency, at the Cwmgelli allotments in Treboeth, for example, the local authority plans to develop a set of starter plots, and I think that's a really useful and important way. I'm very used, in my own allotments, to seeing people who arrive with huge enthusiasm, who put an awful lot of work in over two or three weeks, and then simply find that they can't sustain the effort over the longer run. And starter plots that allow people to build up their interest and capacity I think are a very useful way in which the allotment support grant can be used. 

And I think Swansea has also demonstrated that, as well as direct provision of extra plots, they're making their allotment stock more available to people by improving accessibility, security, recycling facilities on those plots. I recognise what Mike Hedges says, Llywydd: 16 of the local authority community allotment associations in Swansea all have waiting lists. So, our allotment support grant works alongside other initiatives, such as the Community Land Advisory Service, to look for other and new opportunities to increase the availability of land for those people who recognise both the direct benefits of growing food for your own consumption but also the wider health and social benefits that come with sustaining your own allotment. 

Thanks to the generosity of the Pembrokeshire Agricultural Society, over an acre of land has been gifted to the local community to grow their own fruit and vegetables, enabling some 40 Pembrokeshire residents from across all generations to tend to their own piece of land. The project has been spearheaded by Grŵp Resilience, a community-led operation, which aims to foster self-reliance and community spirit by working with individuals, Government organisations and businesses to promote a more sustainable way of life. Grŵp Resilience have been a huge benefit to west Wales, through both the development of over 25 community growing spaces or enhancing our understanding of greener, cleaner and self-sufficient communities. Given their success, First Minister, what steps is the Welsh Government taking to emulate their community model across all of Wales?

I thank the Member for that information. I think what it illustrates is something that you will see in every part of Wales, that the interest in community food growing is wider than just allotments and that it has an enormously enthusiastic group of people there who are interested in finding ways in which not just individuals on their own allotments but, if I think of my own constituency, just bits of marginal land that otherwise were having no purposeful use to them have been taken over by community groups who now look after them, grow food on them, make them available to that local community. And what you see happening in Pembrokeshire I think you will find replicated in that way in every part of Wales. It's why we are committed to the development of a community food strategy, because that will allow us to think of ways in which we can harness that enormous community effort, and, by offering some wider support through public authorities, allow them to do even more in the future.