How allotment societies can manage waiting lists without spreadsheets

Walk into the average allotment society committee meeting and you will find a spreadsheet — often managed by one person, saved on one laptop, shared by email. When that person steps down, their replacement inherits a file that may or may not be up to date.

This is the reality for the vast majority of the UK's 330,000+ allotment plots. And it causes real problems.

The problems with spreadsheet-based waiting lists

For applicants: - No way to check your own position without emailing the secretary - No confirmation that your application was received - No notification when you move up the list - Risk of missing an allocation offer if contact details are stale

For secretaries and committee members: - Manual data entry for every new application - No automatic de-duplication - Difficulty maintaining priority rules consistently - Time-consuming annual renewals - No audit trail if an allocation decision is questioned - Handover risk when committee members change

For councils: - No visibility into how societies are managing their waiting lists - Difficult to report on demand - No way to enforce consistent priority rules

What modern waiting-list management looks like

A well-run digital waiting list gives applicants a self-service portal where they can check their position, update their contact details, and receive automatic notifications. It gives secretaries a dashboard showing every applicant, their priority score, and their history. It handles annual renewals automatically and generates an audit trail for every decision.

Critically, it connects to the national allotments.info directory so that applicants from across the country can find and apply to your site in a single form — rather than hunting for your council's website and filling in a PDF.

Making the switch

The biggest barrier most societies cite is time. "We do not have the bandwidth to migrate everything." A migration plan should therefore start with the current list, priority rules, data quality, and a rollout that the committee can verify before going live.

allotments.info works with TerraLedger, which is built specifically for allotment societies and councils. It handles waiting lists, plot and tenant records, tenancy details, rent and invoice status, and communications — and it connects to the allotments.info directory so applicants can discover participating sites.

If you manage a site that is currently listed on allotments.info, you can claim your listing and verify your public details.