Changes are afoot

BDAC has called its AGM earlier than usual this year. In ‘normal times’ this meeting would be to give Member Associations and Plotholders a review of the year’s activities, to receive and approve annual accounts and to elect Officers and Executive Members for the year ahead. However, these are not ‘normal times’

Following the resignation of Clive Birch in 2023, the Executive has in the past year, concentrated on the role of the BDAC in best representing the interests of Associations and Plotholders given the financial crisis in Birmingham City Council.
Following extensive work by a BDAC Working Party set up in 2022, and legal advice from the National Allotment Society (NSALG), we concluded that the existing Management Model, whereby Associations sign a Management
Agreement with the Council, was economically and practicably unsustainable. We then held a number of consultative meetings with Associations where it was informally agreed that alternatives to the current system needed to be investigated. The Council then issued their “bankruptcy notification”, which put further pressure on for an early resolution.
Any process involving change will require time, and is best achieved one step at a time, with participants’ approval for each step.
Our analysis showed the Council had two options:

• Insist on continuing the current system.
• Place the management of Allotment sites with a third party.

The first option is likely to produce rent increases of 100% over the next three-five years with no improvement to services provided by the City Council and no additional money being made available to Associations. The Council has already decided to stop all weed spraying and other ground maintenance was not being done last year on many sites. Similar things have happened in other cities (Bristol being a current example).

The second option would entail ‘privatisation’ with its attendant risks evidenced
in other parts of the country.

BDAC is offering the Council a third option, to let the BDAC Limited take over the management role currently undertaken by the Council, and to let the Associations, that is the users of allotments, be given greater support, and the financial means to manage their own sites.
The legal advice from NSALG, is that the first step in this process necessitates BDAC becoming an incorporated body. Having examined the options the BDAC Executive has decided that the Cooperative Model, sponsored by NSALG, is the way forward. Authorisation of the necessary changes to our Constitution to allow this is the only thing you are asked to authorise at the AGM on the 23rd March.

Copies of the revised documents will be forwarded to all Secretaries in the next few days.
BDAC becoming Incorporated has no effect on Association responsibilities, and their agreement remains with the Council. As a result of BDAC incorporation, it will have no additional powers to impose anything on individual Associations. Any subsequent changes which we can agree with the Council would need further approval from Associations at an Emergency General Meeting, or the next AGM. But we do, of course, have some positive ideas we will be looking to progress and we hope will meet with the approval of Associations around the City:

• Increasing the rent collected percentage returned to Associations from 10% to up to 70% as part of the changes;
• Developing new Allotment Rules more suited to the 21st Century
• Providing support, training and development opportunities for Committee
  Members and Associates;
• Creating partnerships with other organisations that can be of benefit to
  allotment sites.

None of these will be finalised without the agreement of Allotment Associations.