End the Unfair Ban on the Use of Hosepipes...

End the Unfair Ban on the Use of Hosepipes on Bristol Allotments.

Allotment tenancy agreements have long prohibited the use of hosepipes for the direct watering of crops, but tenants have been allowed to use hosepipes for filling water butts and tanks from the mains supply.

The current ban – based on an alleged but wholly unsubstantiated risk of Legionnaire’s Disease - prohibits all use of hosepipes, both for filling water butts from the mains supply and for the movement of harvested rainwater within individual plots.

This has potentially serious implications for many tenants, especially those for whom the manual handling risks of carrying water over long distances are such that they are now being exposed to significant risks to their health and safety. Many may be forced to give up their plots.

This ban is discriminatory and unnecessary – we call for it to be amended, both to allow the filling of water butts and the use of hosepipes within rainwater harvesting systems, for the following reasons:

·         It is not supported by the science. You cannot contract Legionnaire’s Disease through any form of contact other than inhaling minute aerosol droplets of contaminated water deep into your lungs. Neither filling water butts from the mains, nor the movement of harvested rainwater can create such aerosols.

·         There has never been a single confirmed death from Legionnaire’s Disease contracted from a garden hose, despite countless millions of individual uses of hoses worldwide for several decades.

·         It is not supported by any of the main authoritative horticultural or public health bodies, none of whom call for any such restrictions. Furthermore, the legal officer at the National Allotment Society believes the Council are overstepping their jurisdiction: she said ‘I do not see how [moving harvested rainwater within a plot] can in anyway come under the responsibility of the Council.

·         It is not supported by the Council’s own Risk Assessments, which explicitly confirms that there is no risk of contracting legionnaire’s disease through the movement of harvested rainwater using hosepipes.

The assessment concludes that the impact of the ban on elderly, pregnant and disabled people is ‘disproportionate.’

Despite all this, Bristol City Council refuses to budge and won’t even discuss the matter with allotment tenants!

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Read the full briefing paper