UPROOTED gardeners are angry they can't move on to new allotments.

Former Leys Road allotment-holder Doreen Taylor had to give up her plot in February when Blackpool Council closed the North Shore site to make way for housing.

But all the Leys Road allotment-holders were offered new facilities in Moor Park Avenue but anti-housing protesters are holding up the Moor Park development with a legal application to have it preserved as a town green.

Mrs Taylor, who helped set up the newly-formed Moor Park Avenue Allotments Association, said: "I'm really annoyed and disgusted with what they've done. We're avid gardeners and we want fresh veg.

"We're really keen to get on to the new site, it'll have sheds and fencing and raised beds for the disabled, which I will need - and it's a lot more than we had at Leys Road. We'd have stayed at Leys Road if it was still open, but since the council decided to close it, this action group has not done our cause any good.

"I'm sympathetic to what they're fighting for, I don't think they've done it to stop us getting allotments but to preserve open space."

Greg Clark of the action group which stood in front of bulldozers trying to flatten the Leys Road allotments, said: "There are many other vacant allotments they could move to besides Moor Park.

"We took this action to try to get the Moor Park Avenue site preserved as a town green after going door to door and asking people - they wanted it preserved as open space for dogwalkers."

Besides, an electricity pylon with powerful overhead lines straddled the site and many gardeners were unhappy at possible health effects, said Mr Clark.

The Blackpool Federation of Allotment Associations supported their stand, he added.

Blackpool deputy council leader George Bancroft said 16 out of the 27 Leys Road allotment holders had voted to accept Moor Park Avenue and environmental health officers had advised there was no health or safety risk from the pylon.

A decision on the town green application is expected from the House of Lords in the next few months.

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