Eastleigh Town Council is a local council (just like a parish council) established on 1^st April 2022. The role of the Town Council is to ensure that Eastleigh is a thriving community and a healthy, vibrant and attractive place in which to live, work and visit. 

Just like other parish council’s, Eastleigh Town Council’s main source of income is the council tax ‘precept’ added to the council tax bill paid by all residents in the Eastleigh Town Council area. It helps to fund the services that the Town Council provides for the benefit of all our residents, including allotments. 

For 2025/26, a Band D property paid £77.57 per year for the services provided by Eastleigh Town Council – equivalent to £1.49 per week. You can read more about our council tax precept and how we planned to spend this money in 2025/26 from our annual statement. 

For 2026/27, the Band D precept is increasing to £125.37, but this is offset by the removal of EBC’s Special Expenses. So effectively, the precept will be £79.44 – equivalent to £1.53 per week.

Allotments in Eastleigh Town 

Ownership of the allotment sites in Eastleigh Town transferred to the Town Council on 1^st April 2022. However, Eastleigh Borough Council continued to run the allotments on the Town Council’s behalf until 1^st April 2024, when Eastleigh Town Council brought full responsibility for the allotments in house. Since that time, the Town Council has strived to deliver a high quality of service for plot holders while delivering value for money for the Town’s council tax payers. 

Eastleigh Town Council has been responsible for setting rents and charges for plot holders since April 2022. However, the Council inherited the 10-year price plan adopted by Eastleigh Borough Council in November 2013. This plan established a 50p per rod increase in rent every odd-numbered year up until October 2024. The plan also included the 50% discount for plot holders aged 60 years and over. 

The cost of running allotments 

Allotments in Eastleigh have run at a loss for many years. When Eastleigh Borough Council agreed the 10-year price plan in 2013, it reported that 68% of the cost of running the allotments in 2013/14 was subsidised from council tax income. 

The annual rate of increase for the price plan, averaged over the years, was 2.5%. This is just below the average annual rate of inflation for this period of 2.9%, but has also been compounded by increasing utilities costs in more recent years. 

The figures prepared for the Town Council meeting in September 2025 projected an annual cost for 2025/26 of £49,870 for all the Town Council’s allotments, including allocated officer time for administration. Set against a budgeted income of £16,171 from rents (not accounting for discounts), this means that the net cost to the Town Council is £33,699. This is equivalent to a 68% subsidy from council tax. 

2025/26	Budget	Forecast
Water	£ 6,000	£ 8,750
Grounds maintenance	£ 12,510	£ 8,750
Equipment	£ 5,000	£ 5,650
Officer time	£ 24,935	£ 26,720
Total	£ 48,445	£ 49,870
Income (exc. discounts)	£ (16,171)	£ (16,171)
Net cost	£ 32,274	£ 33,699
Subsidy	67%	68%

Managing allotment costs 

Eastleigh Town Council has a duty of fairness to all its residents. This means that wherever possible, we must ensure we achieve value for money –keeping the cost to tax payers as low as possible while delivering a high-quality and worthwhile service. 

This is why we have agreed several cost savings. This includes the removal of mains electricity from all sites, with mitigations for lighting and the operation of EDACA shops. We also agreed to reduce the office hours allocated to allotments following a benchmarking exercise, which identified that we had significantly more hours allocated compared to other parishes. 

These cost savings result in the budget set out below. If we kept the rent and charges the same as 2025/26, then this would slightly reduce the subsidy from 68% to 63%. 

	2025/26 Forecast	2026/27 Budget
Water	£ 8,750	£ 10,600
Grounds maintenance	£ 8,750	£ 8,100
Equipment	£ 5,650	£ 5,500
Officer time	£ 26,720	£ 17,402
Other costs	–	£ 1,598
Total	£ 49,870	£ 43,250
Income (exc. discounts)	£ (16,171)	£ (16,171)
Net cost	£ 33,699	£ 27,079
Subsidy	68%	63%

The next biggest cost after reducing officer hours is water. We recognise that the summer of 2025 was unusually dry, which means that plot holders were more reliant on mains water. Residents will know that water bills have increased significantly, and Southern Water plans to increase water rates further over the next few years. As a result, the Council felt it important that we identify measures to better control the volume of water that is used on our allotment sites, and therefore the cost. 

All allotment providers face the same issue, and several neighbouring parishes have introduced a separate charge for water based on actual bills for the previous year. This makes the cost of water used on the sites more transparent to plot holders, encourages more conservative use of water, and the adoption of water harvesting measures to further keep costs down. 

These considerations led the Council to conclude that it would be fair and reasonable to introduce a water surcharge of £4 per rod for plot holders. 

Charging scheme proposal 

At its meeting on 25 September 2025, Eastleigh Town Council considered several proposals for allotment rents and charges for the 2026/27 financial year. Council resolved to set the charging scheme as follows: 

1. A progressive increase of rents based on site levels: £2 per rod for Level 2 (Tennyson) and £3 per rod for Level 3 (all other sites). 

2. An additional water surcharge of £4 per rod for 2026/27 

This results in a total charge (including water) of £18.00 per rod for Tennyson, and £19.00 per rod for all other sites. This means that the annual charge for a 5 rod plot (averaged across all sites) would be £94.34. The following table shows how this will impact the budget for 2026/27 if the new charges are adopted from October 2026. The resulting subsidy from council tax is reduced to 53%. 

	2025/26	2026/27
	Forecast	2025/26 charges	New charges
Water	£ 8,750	£ 10,600	£ 10,600
Grounds maintenance	£ 8,750	£ 8,100	£ 8,100
Equipment	£ 5,650	£ 5,500	£ 5,500
Officer time	£ 26,720	£ 17,402	£ 17,402
Other costs	–	£ 1,598	£ 1,598
Total	£ 49,870	£ 43,250	£ 43,250
Rent (exc. discounts)	£ (16,171)	£ (16,171)	£ (17,819)
Water charge	–	–	£ (2,601)
Net cost	£ 33,699	£ 27,079	£ 22,830
Subsidy	68%	63%	53%

At the same meeting, Council considered two equality impact assessments examining the over-60’s 50% discount that was inherited from Eastleigh Borough Council. To date, we have continued to honour this discount for plot holders who were already eligible when the allotments transferred to Eastleigh Town Council. 

The impact assessments identified that continuing to offer this discount has a negative impact on other plot holders who may also have a low income but do not qualify for a blanket age-related discount. A new concessions policy for all plot holders based on eligibility for means-tested payments and benefits (including Pension Credit) has already been adopted. A proposal to progressively reduce the over-60s discount was also examined, and found to mitigate the impact of removing the discount for existing plot holders while creating a fairer system that better accommodates plot holders’ actual incomes. 

Merger of Eastleigh Town and Boyatt Wood Parish Councils 

From 1 April 2026, Boyatt Wood Parish Council will merge with Eastleigh Town Council. You can read more about this merger here. 

The management of St. Catherine’s Road allotments will transfer to Eastleigh Town Council at this time. Boyatt Wood Parish Council has already agreed the charges for St. Catherine’s Road for 2026/27, which will not be affected by the merger. After the merger, the Town Council will need to review these costs for the future.  

For reference, Boyatt Wood Parish Council has resolved the following decisions and charges: 

• Removal of the over-60’s discount for all plot holders since October 2024. 

• Introduced a service charge of £2.50 per rod to cover the cost of water and electricity from 1^st April 2025. 

• Increased the service charge to £5 per rod from 1^st April 2026. 

Taken all together, this means that plot holders at the St. Catherine’s Road site will be paying the equivalent of £20 per rod from 1^st April 2026. 

The aim of this consultation 

By law, plot holders must be informed of any changes to rents at least six months before they will be introduced. Notice was duly issued to plot holders at all sites except for Monks Way. This mistake was identified soon afterwards, but it was too late to give sufficient notice to Monks Way plot holders and continue with the changes from 1^st April 2026. These matters were brought to the Assets Management and Open Spaces Committee meeting on 15 January 2026. Several plot holders also attended the meeting, who made representations about the proposed charging scheme. 

The Committee considered these representations, and the impact of proceeding with the new charges scheme for all sites except Monks Way. As a result, the Committee resolved to postpone the charges scheme for all sites until 1^st October 2026, and use the time afforded by the delay to carry out a consultation with all plot holders to inform our final decision on how to proceed. 

All residents and plot holders are encouraged to complete this survey to let us know your views on allotment charges and the proposed charging scheme. 

Respond to the consultation 

The survey will close at midnight on Wednesday 4^th March, and the findings will be reported to the Asset Management and Open Spaces Committee on 11^th March 2026. We aim to decide on the new charges scheme at that meeting, otherwise the decision will be referred to Full Council when it meets on 18^th March 2026. 

Once the decision has been made, notice will be issued to all plot holders no later than 31^st March 2026 for implementation and billing from 1^st October 2026.