OFF-loading the running of Worcester’s over-subscribed allotments to the people who use them is not yet an option.

A group of City Councillors has been looking at how best to run the city’s allotments after record numbers of people applied to lease them from owners Worcester City Council.

We previously reported how one of the councillors’ initial recommendations was to let allotment holders run the £27,000 service.

Another choice is for the city to retain control but the cash-strapped Guildhall favours disposing of the allotments to a third party. Now, an interim report has found a lot more work is needed before the city’s 894 plots could be handed over to a group like the Allotment Forum – an existing body run by and for allotment holders.

Final recommendations were due to go before the city council this month but more information has been asked for on how the forum could be brought up to scratch.

Andy Roberts, city mayor and group chairman, said regardless of what happened, the system needed a shake-up.

“The system isn’t sufficiently developed to be handed over to a third party like the forum,” he said.

“The model is something like St John’s Fishing Club , where there is an organised board of members and workers, with ownership.”

“The risk was had we not looked at this now, the allotments might get handed over, it wouldn’t have been successful, and the whole thing breaks down.” He said funding the allotments was one of the main issues. However, allotment holders were “intelligent enough to realise” more money w as needed to properly fund the system, and that meant future rate increases were likely.

The way plots are allocated across the city’s 25 sites also needs shaking up, according to Coun Roberts, who said: “We need a proper board with a proper system.” He says a democratically-constituted body would need to replace the forum’s current set-up, which has developed on an ad hoc basis. “In the past, the system was fine because the demand for allotments was lower. But now we need a proper system to make it fairer and more efficient,” said Coun Roberts.

He said the practice of giving allotments to people outside Worcester stopped.

Earlier this year, your Worcester News reported how hundreds of people were on a waiting list for a city council plot.

A final report should now be ready for the city council in early 2010.