Articles

Everyone – particularly drivers – are advised that contractors Malcolm Thomas Ltd. will be on site reinstating the tarmac from their work of a few years ago, which the Council didn’t cover on that occasion. PPAA Committee have decided to fund this work themselves, and were very pleased with a quote of only £250 plus VAT.

Drivers are advised not to attempt to drive down this track until the work is finished, as even if it were open, their vehicles may be trapped if it were to begin after this time.

Update: the work is now complete and the tarmac reinstated at the necessary points.

PPA Website Team

There are a number of issues with the new Tenancy Agreements being sent out by Cardiff Council, that multiple plot holders have raised with the PPAA Committee:

• In the case of existing joint or multiple tenancies only one person is named on the new tenancy document.*
• The Date of Birth is left blank, although the Council have date of birth information.
• No rent information is given. Also there is no concession information. Thus tenants are asked to sign a legal agreement but without the cost being known. 
• The process makes the use of the Welsh language difficult. The legality of this is questionable.

A Tenancy Agreement is between the plot holder and the Council, and the PPAA Committee are not involved in its implementation. All queries and amendments regarding the new Tenancy Agreement should be therefore sent to the Council at Allotments@cardiff.gov.uk and not to PPAA Committee, who will shortly be making their own representations to the Council on these and related points.

Mike Powell, PPAA Site Representative

*Update: it’s been found, that after the first tenant invited to sign has done so, a further email is sent to the joint tenant to do so too (assuming that the Council have an address.) However, as far as we know, no one was informed that this is what would happen…

(Tenants may also find this previous article helpful.)

Admin

As we enter peak wasp season, but also meet activity from other wildlife, it’s perhaps timely to remind all of the existence of this website page: Wasps, rats, other pests, and beneficial visitors e.g. bees. It explains what to do if a problem should arise.

Admin

Present: Gordon Goldsmith (Chair), Mike Powell (Site Representative), Wendy Gunter (Treasurer), Lewis Evans, Sue Pasek, Martin Pasek, Adrian Peters, Rhys Williams.

Apologies: None received.

The meeting opened at 19:00.

Matters arising from previous Minutes: 

To be covered in agenda.

Chair’s report:

• Gordon opened the meeting by welcoming Adrian as he attended for the first time.

Site Representative’s report:

• Mike attended GDPR (confidentiality of people’s data) and Orkastrate (the Council’s allotments tenancy management system) training on 20/7/2026, at Forest Farm Council office.

• He is now in possession of the tablet device (one per Site Representative, for accessing and managing the system). Currently it is “read only”, and therefore of somewhat restricted use. Improvements in its capacity are promised for the future, however.

• Not all information sent by email to Allotments Officer had been fed into the Orkastrate system. Some of this however, was nonetheless added while he was at Forest Farm.

• Two new tenancies have been issued. There are currently ten vacant plots, with two more to be given up later this year. No structure requests have been received.

• One waste removal session was organised at a cost of £360.

• CAHA (Cardiff Allotments Holders Association) met on 22/7/2026, and Mike attended.

• Outgoing CAHA officers were re-elected unopposed.

• The Council is now using an IT specialist to address issues with Orkastrate, and the meeting in general thought that progress was being made.

• The general consensus was that there was some progress being made with failures to bill tenants, but Mike wondered as to the extent of this.

• Re invoices, Adrian said that the Riverside Community Gardens Association were still waiting to change their Tenancy Agreement from Cardiff Salad Gardens to Riverside Community Gardens Association. Mike said that he would try to progress this.

• At the Sites Representatives’ meeting with the Council, to be held 12/08/26, CAHA will raise: The cost of Pest Control, and whether this is in or out of Parks Department budget, and also how the deposits from the new tenancies will be managed, for both locally managed and non locally managed sites respectively. 

Mike will raise the related situation of non-billing by the Council and the requirement to have paid the bill to receive a new tenancy agreement.

Treasurer’s report:

• Wendy reported that the PPAA bank account had a healthy balance.

Water Supply and Sewerage:

• Gordon extended thanks to the plot holders who have turned the water off overnight for several weeks, and to Martin for his work in liaising with the Council to ensure that the repairs were made. A full report on the works may be found here.

Delivery of manure:

• There was an unexpected delivery of manure, after the other allotment sites understood to be due to receive it could not accommodate the full amount. Fortunately Martin and Gordon just happened to be on site to make sure that the manure was delivered safely and to the correct pens.

New Contract roll out 2026:

• The Council have indicated that the rollout will start very soon.

• The Council have requested help from Mike re the contactability of some plot holders. They have now received several updated email addresses and first time email addresses from Mike – with help from Sue.

• The Council have promised – that for plot holders without email – the documents can be signed on a paper copy through the Site Representative. However, their numbers will be small, we understand.

• We understand that new Tenancy Agreements will be sent out by email for signature by “Docusign” (electronic, i.e. no paper needed signature). However, as it stands, Mike has no information that this process has yet begun.

Waste removal, skips etc:

• The Committee recognise that whatever our Tenancy Agreements may say about our needing to remove waste materials from site ourselves, there may be circumstances where it’s unreasonable to expect tenants to do this, e.g. where they have inherited structures from a previous tenant, but which have since dilapidated. The Committee are considering the various options to do justice to such encumbered gardeners, and so these remain under review.

Vacant Plot Clearing:

• At least eight plots need clearing. Others may follow from “Cultivate or Quit” terminations, and following the new tenancy rollout. 

• Only one volunteer joined Mike on 19/7/2026. A substantial amount of rubbish was removed from plot 48b which was later taken from site. Mike completed the clearing of this plot and also largely cleared 54b. The clearing of 144b is ongoing.     

• Another volunteer session will be organised for after school holidays and with – we hope – cooler weather.

• The amount of work may require paying for someone to clear plots.

• Vacant plot viewing will resume in September.

Green Truck Replacements:

• Following the disappearance of one of the recently purchased green trucks, a further two have been bought and labelled.

AOB:

• Adrian raised petty crime on site and its apparent increase.

• Martin proposed approaching a contractor to tarmac the areas on the main track left unsurfaced by previous excavations.

• Mike is to chase the issuing by the Council of terminations identified by the Cultivate or Quit process. Also the progress regarding plot 103a, that is, the related Council fly-tipping case, after two years of no apparent progress.

There was no further business, and the meeting ended at 20:13.

The next PPAA Committee meeting will be at 19:00 on Tuesday, 22nd September 2026, in the upstairs meeting room of The Cricketers, Cathedral Road, Cardiff.

Everyone on site will probably be pleased to hear that this serious problem has been resolved.

The leak had progressively worsened, and was losing about a cubic metre-and-a-half an hour of late, at a cost of £1.92 per cubic metre. Those fond of arithmetic can work out the annual cost of this to the Council Tax payers of Cardiff.

The contractors, Malcom Thomas Ltd., located the leak by successively halving the suspect length of pipe with isolating valves until they got it down to a length which could be economically replaced. They did the latter by threading smaller, 32mm MDPE pipe through the old apparatus, which avoided expensive and disruptive trench digging.

During the course of this work it was established that the leak was under the track which runs beside the tennis courts. There was some increase in greenery of the vegetation at the surface, but nothing striking. Malcolm explained that the water easily runs away and disperses through the alluvial gravel which lies beneath the soil here.

Here’s a plan of our installation as it stands, which shows the general location of its main features:

Note: mobile device users may need to download the file to view it.

Here are some pictures showing the replacement method:

We extend our sincere thanks to Rhodri Edwards, Technical Manager, Parks for overseeing this work, to its Project Manager Mark Davies, and to Malcolm Thomas and his staff for their professional work and for their genial presence on the site, but especially to our own group of volunteers for their turning off the water at night until these repairs could be done.

PPA Website Team

Could plot holders who know others – but who don’t follow this website – please kindly pass on this information to them – thanks.

The contractors are now working to locate the serious leak in PPA’s pipework, and making excellent progress.

The water is now left turned on by the volunteers, who previously shared a rota to turn it off overnight, and to whom PPAA Committee are sincerely grateful.

The contractors may need to turn off the water however, and this may be at unpredictable times for periods of typically two or three hours during the day.

There may well be no vehicular access to some parts of site south of Road Five for some days.

We trust that everyone will understand that this inconvenience is unavoidable, especially as the other option for the Council could be to turn off water to PPA completely.

Admin

Water

I today met the project manager and contractor on site, to give them a key and to discuss the coming works.

Work should begin within a couple of days. The contractors will fit further isolating stopcocks in the suspect length of pipe to narrow down the location of the leak. This will involve excavations on the main track, and so vehicular access won’t be possible beyond the point of the works. There will also be interruptions to the site water supply of typically two hours during the fitting of the stopcocks.

The largest vehicle used will be transit van size I was informed, so this shouldn’t present any particular problem, but everyone’s advised to take due care all the same, and to supervise children appropriately in the vicinity of the works.

Manure

We’d been told by the Riding School management that the next clearance of manure wouldn’t involve PPA, as it was going to “other allotments”.

However, while I was waiting to meet the above my ‘phone rang, and it was the manager of CRS. Apparently the “other allotments” – Pontcanna ‘A’ it turned out – couldn’t take all of the manure and she asked if it would be possible to deliver to PPA. She was lucky that I was there, as otherwise I’d not have been available to do this supervision. (Since Sue’s retirement as Site Representative we’d made clear that it was time – after some years now – for someone else to take on this aspect of the Site Representative’s remit.)

Since Llandaff Fields allotments and Pontcanna ‘A’ – even together – have nothing like the number of tenants that PPA does it’s understandable that their need for manure may not accommodate all that needs disposal by CRS. So we can perhaps expect deliveries to continue fairly regularly in future. Indeed, the amount delivered today was substantial.

Communal tools, wheelbarrows, trolleys etc.

Plot holder Michael McGuone very kindly restored two abandoned wheelbarrows to good serviceable condition, and left these by the southeast manure pen for his fellow gardeners to use communally. Sadly, these quickly disappeared. Whether these were taken and kept for personal use by PPA tenants or taken off site isn’t known. One of the new green trolleys has also vanished. The other is safe, but not available for use just at the moment, and further new ones have been bought by PPAA Committee for service soon.

Would everyone please note then, that such things left by the pens are for communal use by PPA gardeners only, and not to give away, whether for private use or for community projects elsewhere in Cardiff.

Scrap metal collections

Since the general tidy up and removal of waste at the southeast end of site, the collection point for any scrap metal is now immediately to the right of, rather than in front of the blue shipping container.

(Plot holders are reminded, that there isn’t any collection, or on-site recycling facility for any other unwanted materials.)

Martin P

Admin.

Present: Gordon Goldsmith (Chair), Mike Powell (Site Representative), Wendy Gunter (Treasurer), Sue Pasek, Rhys Williams, Martin Pasek.

Apologies: Lewis Evans, Nerys Lloyd-Pierce, Sera Jones, Adrian Peters.

The meeting opened at 19:00.

Matters arising from previous Minutes: 

To be covered in agenda.

Matters arising from AGM: 

The Committee were re-elected unopposed along with new members. Mike Powell was elected as Site Representative.

Chair’s report:

• Gordon opened the meeting to welcome – in their absence – new Committee members Sera and Adrian. 

• Thanks were extended to Sue as she steps down as Site Representative.

Site Representative’s report:

• Mike reported that he will attend GDPR and Orkastrate training on 20/7/26, at the Council’s Forest Farm office.

• He will attend the CAHA (Cardiff Allotment Holders Association) bi-monthly meeting on 22/7/26, location as yet to be confirmed.

• Since May, Mike has let six plots, and Sue three.

• Three structures application forms have been requested.

• Eleven plots have been given up.

• Mike has applied to the Council for our waiting list to be reopened. As yet he has not received a reply. Sue explained that the Council have a “tipping point’ for closing the list based on vacant plot numbers v. number of people already on the waiting list. Mike to enquire re the exact ratio applied.

• Further correspondence has been received directly from a tenant with a long history of making varied complaints and allegations, and receipt acknowledged. No contact has been made to the PPAA Committee by the tenant’s chosen advocate, name unknown, despite the tenant previously stating that they would do so. The tenant had also requested that the PPAA Committee not contact them directly, although their most recent communication demanded a reply. The Council are in the loop.

• £750 has been paid to Jack’s Waste for removal of rubbish from vacant plots.

• The Council have cleared the fire debris following the arson on plot 131a.

• £150 paid to an appropriately-insured tenant for strimming down overgrown vacant plots. 

• £100 also paid to him for track strimming and mowing.

Treasurer’s report:

• Wendy has received the PPAA’s annual grant from the Council.

• The recently purchased card machine has been successfully used at plot lettings and the plant sale.

Delivery of wood chip:

• Many thanks go to plot holder Louise Tambini for organising delivery – through her Keep Wales Tidy contacts and Cardiff Council – of some wood chip previously used for pathways at the Blackweir festival site. Thanks also go to Committee member Sera for overseeing the delivery on site.

• Mike proposed that we reaffirm an earlier Committee decision only to accept wood chip from Cardiff Council. This was passed unanimously.

Delivery of manure:

• The Committee have been informed that ‘other allotment sites’ have currently got priority for the next manure deliveries from the stables. The Committee are monitoring the situation. Gordon reminded plot holders that they were free to collect manure from the stables manure pile at any time.

Water Supply:

• Following on from the issuing of a Notice to Repair by Welsh Water (Dŵr Cymru) to Cardiff Council, a contractor and council official visited site to assess the situation, no further information re time scale for the repair of this significant leak has been received from the Council. 

• A group of plot holders have been turning the water off overnight as requested by the Council. The PPAA Committee extend their sincere thanks for this.

Council’s non-cultivation of plots process 2026:

• Ten requests for termination of tenancy were sent to the Council.

Waste removal, skips etc:

• Gordon, Rhys and Mike to research suppliers of one-off waste removal before next meeting.

Vacant Plot Clearing:

• A reminder that there is a work party to clear some vacant plots on Sunday 19th July at 11:00, meeting by the south gate. Any plot holder able to lend their time to this work will be gratefully welcome.

AOB:

• The Committee discussed the rollout by the Council of their new Tenancy Agreement for every plot holder. The Council intend to start the process the week beginning the 20th July 2026. Plot holders are reminded to keep across communication on this matter, and to be aware that it is being applied by the Council across all sites in Cardiff.

• Martin mentioned that one of the recently bought green trollies has gone missing. Gordon proposed that it be replaced, being popular and well-used on site, and would also look at other sizes available.

There was no further business, and the meeting ended at 20:34.

The next PPAA Committee meeting will be at 19:00 on Tuesday, 11th August 2026, in the upstairs meeting room of The Cricketers, Cathedral Road, Cardiff.

Following the Blackweir events, the organisers have a significant amount of – we understand – good quality wood chips – briefly used for tracks etc. – for disposal, and PPAA Committee have agreed to accept as much of this as we can.

We’ll be getting deliveries tomorrow, from 8.30 till around 12.30. We’ll see how we get on, and if there’s more room and we run out of time tomorrow, delivery will resume on Friday.

Could everyone bringing vehicles to site please make sure that they don’t obstruct the pens, therefore. At this stage we don’t know how big the delivery trucks will be and how much turning space will be needed, so please don’t park in either the Western Avenue gate car park or the area near the pens at the southeast end of site during this time. There’s parking on Road Three, and by plot 90, as well as by the Community Garden container.

We thank Louise Tambini of Keep Wales Tidy, and PPA plot holder, for offering this material.

Kind thanks,

pp Sera Jones, PPAA Committee

Further working party:

PPAA Committee are very grateful for the valuable help given by the recent working parties.

The Council are slowly catching up with the backlog of updates needed for the Orkastrate system, and it’s becoming clear that the scale of the task – the sheer number of neglected plots now released by the Council, and the speed of growth of weeds – means that considerable further work will be needed, and so volunteers are invited to meet again for this on Sunday, 19th July, at 1100.

As before, the meeting place will be at the PPA communal poly tunnel by the southeast gate, and the clearance will start with plot 54b.

The invitation’s to all on site again, not just to those who’ve previously volunteered. So would those interested in this vital work please contact PPAA Committee (whether they’ve done this before or not)?

Sincere thanks,

Mike Powell, Site Representative