Barnet allotments: the council does not run a waiting list

If you have been looking for Barnet’s allotment waiting list and failing to find it, that is because there is not one. This is the unusual bit about allotments here, and it changes how you go about getting a plot.

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In most London boroughs the council holds a central list, sets a standard rent and allocates plots in turn. Barnet devolves the whole thing. Around forty sites across the borough are managed by their own societies, and each society handles its own allocations, keeps its own queue and sets its own rent.

The practical consequence is that there is no single number to be told you are 400th on. There are forty queues of different lengths, and joining the right one matters more than joining early.

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Two routes. The Barnet Allotments Federation lists the sites and can point you to the right society. Or approach the site you want directly — many publish a contact address, and a plot at a site nobody has heard of will come up far sooner than one at the popular site down the road.

Because rents are set locally they vary, so ask when you enquire rather than budgeting from a figure you read somewhere else. There is no borough-wide rate to look up — that is a genuine absence rather than a gap in this guide.

Worth asking each society

How long the current queue is, and how many plots came up last year — the second question is more useful than the first. Whether half plots are available, which are often much quicker. What the rent is and what it includes. And whether there is a cultivation requirement, since most societies will take a plot back if it is left untended.