[thomas]

hey, does anyone know where i can get information about public liability? A link to a website or maybe a company that provides it? it's for allotments.

[inishindie]

Hi Thomas

Get good legal advice.... It's a real pain in the neck but important. Importantly get people that are supportive.

I tried to get the local council here where I lived to give over some land to turn into allotments last year. I was met with a lot of restictions and opposition. The council were worried that I would get the land, build a shed on it then claim it as my own, they must have read my diary.......

The land was seen, like most land in Ireland, as potential for development, so the thought of putting some dirty spade wielding eco nuts on a piece of land that could have big short term monetary gain was too much for them and they declined my offer of maintenence etc.

Their other reason was that the land would be used as a drinking den.....again they must have read my mind, I could have held some great home brew parties in the shed.

Their main reason though was public liability. They were concerned that anything that happened to a careless gardener or drunken 16 year old falling into his bottle of cider would come back to haunt them.

Maybe if I was a bit more prepared and sorted out a package that would clear them of any responsibility, things might have been different.............If it's your own land I would suspect things will be a bit different......

Try Citizens advice for a starter......

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories

Cheers

Ian

[thomas]

Thanks Ian for the great information, I was under the impressions that with council provided allotments or land the council would have to look after any type of insurance. The reason I am looking for this is to put together some information to help people setup there own allotments. This could be community groups or land owners.

Thanks again, i will try Citizens advice first and see what i get back.

Thomas

[inishindie]

Hi Thomas
I'm sure the CI will point you in the right direction.....

The insurance issue is the reason why our council here wouldn't touch an allotment scheme... I am being a bit harsh here but if allotments were to be set up (and hopefully they wil be as our green councillor is pressing for some) the responsibility will probably fall onto the group who set it up and annual subscriptions to an insurance company will be needed.

We are living in an area where the council have got rid of the paper, plastic and tetrapak recycling facilities in the town ( "too messy" a council official says..) and are currently taking a third of the recycling centre and building offices on it to be rented out so we can't expect too much.....

The site I was looking at last year was going to be more of a community garden next to a housing estate and I think that that would fall into a different catagory. It was going to be a place where kids from the estate could go and grow their own stuff and have communal seating areas and play equipmant etc and maybe some form of youth centre... nice idea but a bit too high maintenence for a council that are happy to introduce pay and display charges all over the town to increase revenue, then put up CCTV cameras in the town to catch kids loitering because they have no-where to go....

I'd better shut up and get off of my soap box.

Cheers

Ian

[Dr. Sunny Thomson]

This is a bit scary in Somerset where allotment holders have to each take out £5million public liability insurance in case a visitor has an accident on their patch of soil.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-460538/Danger-A-5m-injury-risk-allotment.html

Any chance of sticking it on the house insurance for each individual.

[thomas]

Thanks for the link that's quite amazing really. will have to see if anything similar has happened in Ireland even if not for that amount of money! Just had to do a post about it!
http://www.irishallotments.net/?p=593

[anchoress]

One of the IT colleges whose car park was used each week, in Sligo, for a Farmers' Market insisted that each stallholder took out indemity in their favour to that amount, ie E5 million after someone had entered the college selling dud ipods or something similar.

At that stage we left the market.