legal matter regarding Allotments Act

[cornwallallotments]

Hello, I rent out allotments privately on my own land, (approx 80 allotments) we are nothing at all to do with the local council. I have given one of my allotmenteers notice to quit her allotment due to breaching the agreement and complaints received about her from other allotmenteers, she has also been quite rude to my daughter (This is the first time I have had to do this and I have been very upset about it)The allotmenteer has replied that under the allotment act 1908, she has to be given one years notice period to give up her allotment and also be compensated financially as well, in my agreement the terms are that if someone breaches the agreement at any time, I can give them 28 days notice to quit their allotment. which is what I have given her, I have also offered to refund her a years rent.

My question is, does the allotment act cover private allotments too? Do I have to give her the one years notice to quit or does my contract with her stand?

Thanks J

(I like to run a happy allotment site and can usually sort out any problems that arise, and am very unhappy that I have had to give notice to an allotmenteer however in this case I really dont think it can be sorted partly due to her threats and attitude towards both myself and fellow allotmenteers)

[cornwallallotments]

[Fork]

Your site is private and owned by you..I would be very very suprised if this woman has any comeback via the Allotment Act.

[saddad]

I think Fork is right and it's just "normal" landlord/tenant agreements... unwashed can probably help...

[Digeroo]

I do not think that you are covered by the Allotment Act, but presume you have a contract of some kind.  I should not think that she has rights of notice if she has breached the terms of the contract. 

I would suggest that you draw up new contracts and remove the word allotment from them.  Our are decribed as vegetable growing areas. 


May be a good idea to ensure some of the complaints are in writing.

You may need to give more notice if you simply decide to change you mind and cease letting out the land.  We have an annual contract.

Since she does not inhabit the land I do not think she is also not covered by the terms for rented property.  You are not making her homeless.

[Ellen K]

Even if you are covered by the Allotment legislation, if she is in violation of her tenancy agreement, you can give her one months notice to quit.  The 1 year thing refers to things like if the landowner sells the land and stuff like that.

But .... in her defence (odious as she might possibly be) .... have you given her any written warning that this would happen if she did not improve her ways?

[cornwallallotments]

Thank you for your advice everyone, the reason she has breached her agreement is that she has brought unsterilised soil on to the plot in a large quantity which has infected the plot with bindweed, no I havnt given her a warning letter, I probably should have............

The complaints were about her dog barking at other peoples chickens and children. I know she has rights and I have tried to be fair, but she has been difficult about many things and I have now just had enough.

[Unwashed]

Hi Cornwall, I'm sorry you're having trouble.  It's a shame allotmenteering isn't always as stress free as it should be isn't it.

There are several bits of the various allotments acts that apply even to private allotments, like the absolute right to keep rabbits and chickens, but as it happens the statutory provisions for evicting a tenant who's broken the terms of her tenancy agreement aren't in the allotments acts at all.

It's a little complicated, but to get it right I need to give you the full story:

First off, you're not giving your tenant notice to quit, you're forfeiting the tenancy.  It's important to understand the difference, so let me explain.

I'm assuming that you charge rent annually, so technically it's an annual periodic tenancy.  What this means is that the tenancy continues from year to year automatically renewing each year on the aniversary until either you or the tenant tells the other (by serving a notie to quit) that you don't want it to renew anymore.  It's for this reason that a notice to quit must end the tenancy on exactly the last day of the tenancy period, becase technically it isn't ending the tenancy as such, it's just stopping it from renewing.  Both you and the tenant have the right to serve this notice whether the tenancy agreement says anything about it or not, and unless the agreement says otherwise the tenant must give at least six months notice, and you have to give a year's notice - it's a year's notice for you because S.1 Allotments Act 1922 (as ammended S. Allotments Act 1950) applies even to private allotments.  You don't need any reason to justify serving a notice to quit, and it isn't how you evict a tenant for a breach of the agreement.

So notice to quit is one mechanism by which the tenancy may be brought to an end.  Another completely seperate mechanism is forfeiture.  Forfeiture is a bit more complicated.  To forfeit the lease for a breach of the agreement the agreement must have a specific term allowing you to forfeit, or else the term must be phrased carefully - this does get rather complicated so lets hope your agreement has a forfeiture clause.  Of course, the tenant must also have demonstrably broken a specific term of the agreement - what term exactly has she broken?

There is a statutory procedure for forfeiting the lease and if you don't follow it you can't enforce the forfeiture.  S.146 Law of Property 1925 says that for a breach that can be corrected - like inadequate cultivation - you must write to your tenant and tell her specifically which term of the agreement she has broken, and you must give her reasonable time to put the matter right, and only if it's not put right after that time can you forfeit the lease.  For a breach that can't be put right you still have to give her the choice of compensating you for the breach - so you have to assess the cost to you of whatever she did and ask her for the money, and if she pays up you can't forfeit.

That's not the whole story though.  Even though your tenant may have, in your opinion, broken a term of her tenancy agreement, the term still needs to pass the fairness test of Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.  So a term that says you can't import unstearilized soil is suspect because it would appear to go further than necessary in protecting the landlord's legitimate interests - we often bring in weed seeds on manure and all you do is pull up the weeds when they germinate.  There's also a problem if the landlord is the sole judge of complaints - dogs will at times bark at chickens, but that's hardly an evictable offence.

Can you post the tenancy agreement?

[cornwallallotments]

Thank you unwashed, could I possibly send the agreement to you via email as I dont like to publish it online due to the fact that I paid to have it drawn up and in the past people have tried to get hold of it for their own use in setting up allotments. I love running my allotments and have over 80 very happy allotmenteers its very upsetting that this person is causing me so much trouble, I will give you the full details when I send the agreement to you as I have not wanted to publicly publish them all as I dont think that it fair on the person who I am talking about. J

[Unwashed]

You're welcome to PM it me, but out of respect for the forum the discussion needs to be public, so will it be OK if I post snipets?

[Robert_Brenchley]

If I was in your position, I'd have sent her a letter warning her about importing soil, and required her to remove the bindweed within a set time or have the tenancy terminated, since its obviously contrary to the interests of her fellow tenants to import such a noxious weed. As for the dog and the threatening behaviour, it depends how bad it is. Is the dog just barking, or is it being aggressive? In the latter case, an instant ban would be called for, with eviction to follow if there's a recurrence. Do dogs have to be kept on a leash onsite? If the tenant is being genuinely aggressive, that should be grounds for eviction.

[tonybloke]

what's so secret about your tenancy agreement?

[cornwallallotments]

 Basically it started last year when I let the allotment out to her, she asked if I could erect a fence for her, I said I would try to get someone to do it, however wasnt able to, she was cross about this but she had her fence erected by someone else arranged by herself. Last year I had 2 people complain about her dog, and she has upset several people on the plots and my 18 yr old daughter, then I discovered she had brought (probably about a ton) of very poor quality topsoil very stony and infested with bindweed onto the plot. before I had a chance to speak to her about this someone let my horses out of their field by cutting the electric fence, they got into the allotment field and did damage her plot, as I was ill and didnt carefully check every plot and they had got into her plot via another I didnt realise they had done any damage therefore didnt contact her. I then received a nasty email from her demanding compensation (which I would be happy to give and have given to others who had damage done) the tone of the email was quite threatening and I was very upset, I realised that this wasnt going to work out as she had upset too many people and broken her agreement, I sent her an email giving her a months notice (as is in the agreement) and offering to pay back the years rent as compensation and also compensate for her lost vegetables and the compost etc if she removed the topsoil and brought me the remains of the vegetables so I could see that she actually had them growing there in the first place (as I had been told by her neighbour that she had no veg there) I received a threatening email (full  of SHOUTING capital letters) saying she was going to put all over the internet that I was harassing her and that my allotment site was badly run and no good unless I gave her what she wanted, I was shocked  and upset I replied politely reiterating my offer of compensation, but have since received several more nasty emails from her each one threatening legal action against me eg one stated that as I had broke my part of the contract by not erecting her fence that the contract was now null and she could break any part of it she liked! I realise I was possibly a little hasty in giving her notice in the first email, however I was so upset and shocked at her email and didnt want her upsetting any more people on the plots. Now she is threatening to take me to court under the allotments act as she says i have to give her a full years notice and compensation for that year as well! On taking legal advice I was advised that unless I had been negligent in letting my horses escape onto the plot that I dont actually legally have to compensate people, however I am happy to offer compensation as I feel morally that I should.

[cornwallallotments]

tonybloke....there is nothing secret about my agreement its just that twice people have tried to get copies from me in an underhand manner so that they could use it to set up their own allotments, I dont have a problem with  showing it to people and had they asked me rather than use underhand methods  I would happily have shown them a copy, as I have helped several local people set up their own allotment sites, I just didnt like their way of doing things, however if its a real problem for people on here I will post it. ( I think I just get a bit paranoid about it tbh)

[tonybloke]

here's a copy of our associations tenancy agreement.
[attachment=1]

[cornwallallotments]

Is yours a privately owned allotments site or a council owned site? I will post mine when I get on the office computer tomorrow.

[tonybloke]

Is yours a privately owned allotments site or a council owned site? I will post mine when I get on the office computer tomorrow.

our association purchased them from the council a few yrs ago, we got 62.5 acres of allotment land.

[Unwashed]

Cornwall, did you get the help you needed?

[pigeonseed]

Quite strict tonybloke - I like dilapidated structures myself  ;D And some of our plots are 5' wide, so it would be hard to keep fruit bushes from the edges!

[tonybloke]

Quite strict tonybloke - I like dilapidated structures myself  ;D And some of our plots are 5' wide, so it would be hard to keep fruit bushes from the edges!

5ft wide? how long are your 10 rod plots?

[aj]

Was it part of the agreement for you to put up a fence? And if you had done so, would the horses have not got into her plot?

I can see that this has got out of hand, but you didn't mention the horses thing at the start, or the fence thing; so it does seem 6 of one and half a dozen of the other....I'd be pretty annoyed if a fence had been promised presumably as part of the agreement and as a result, the owner of the plot let horses onto my plot [not saying you did, but from a plotters point of view, it could look like that].

Have you sat down with her and worked through a solution, rather than relying on emails/phone calls etc?