We submitted our Community Asset Transfer Request (so called) to NHS Lothian back in January and were originally expecting a formal decision to accept or reject our request to be made at the July meeting of the NHS Lothian Board. However, in June we agreed to their request for a three month extension. The NHS evaluation panel asked for this extension in the hope of gaining more clarity from East Lothian Council as to the likely future designation of the land in their next, much delayed, Local Development Plan (LDP2) -which is now due to be adopted in 2027.
The evaluation panel are clearly supportive of our desire to see the continuation and further development of the community garden and understand the multiple, positive, social, environmental and public health benefits. However, the sticking point remains the difference between the ‘current use value’ of the land that we are offering and the price that NHS Lothian still believe it may fetch were it to be sold for housing development.
There is no reason at all to believe that the garden will be zoned for housing in LDP2 – zoning designations can no longer be carried over from one Local Development Plan to the next, the Dunbar and West Barns Local Place Plan came out strongly in favour of the retention of the community garden and, also, East Lothian Council is obliged to allocate land somewhere locally for community growing. There are also policies in the existing Local Development Plan that lead us to believe that it would, in any case, be extremely difficult for to obtain permission for housing on the garden site even if it is currently still zoned as a potential ‘windfall’ housing site. Despite this, NHS Lothian is still working on the basis of a ‘land value appraisal’ of something over £1.1 million whereas we have had a professional valuation of £45,000 as a community garden.
Obviously it seems to us that it is a ‘no-brainer’ that the garden should be brought into community ownership. We believe that our application makes a strong case that this would constitute ‘best value’ for NHS Lothian in the long-term and would support their own priorities and strategies as well as many of the Scottish Government’s ‘national outcomes’.
The legislation requires ‘public bodies’ to accept asset transfer requests ‘unless there are reasonable grounds for refusal’. However, we now need to just sit and wait for the decision of the NHS Lothian Board which is scheduled for 7th October. If the decision goes against us, or if they offer to sell us the site at an unreasonable price, we will appeal to the Scottish Government. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
In the meantime, despite the current lack of an on-site water supply or toilet facilities, which have severely restricted the activities and events that we can run, the garden is thriving with many regular volunteers at our Saturday afternoon sessions, an abundance of crops and a flourishing range of habitats developing.