Now here is a complicated story that raises its head every few years in Tilehurst.
On one side is the Tilehurst Poors Land Trust, an old established parish charity that provides all sorts of help to local people who have fallen on hard times. And they do a good, and useful, job. It relies on its assets to fund its good works. The assets consist of land (mostl use for allotments plus the Victoria Rec which is leased as a park to the council on a long term lease) and the proceeds of previous land sales all of which allows the trust to provide some £10-12,000 of charity every year. Their only way of increasing their funding for charitable works is to sell off more of the land they still own.
On the other side are the allotment holders who have spent years cultivating their plots to provide sustainable, wholesome, food for themselves and their families.

Some fifteen years ago the trust moved a number of allotment holders off one side of the land at Kentwood Hill and on to vacant plots nearer Armour Hill and Polstead Road. They then proposed to sell the Kentwood Hill land for development and use the proceeds to fund more charitable work. There was uproar in Tilehurst as allotment holders feared the thin end of the wedge and the death of the remaining allotments if they gave way on any of them. There was no thought for increasing the charity’s good works, for building much needed affordable housing in Tilehurst, just an absolute determination to stop any development on allotment land.

And so we have had the same scenario played out between the trust and allotment holders every few years. Currently the trust have abandoned Kentwood Hill (still derelict after all these years) and have given notices to quit to the 7 or 8 plot holders of a small patch of allotments on Chapel Hill, a site which even the trust admit (on their website) would be a very difficult place to develop given the proximity to existing houses.

I cannot see this latest ploy succeeding any more than previous attempts to sell off allotments and the council is in no mood to allow development on such land.
The only way to break the impasse would be for the trust to come to an arrangement with the council and the allotment holders to sell off part of Kentwood Hill (much of which is not suitable for allotments anyway) for development in return for guarantees to retain the other allotments over the long term (perhaps 50 years in to the future). However, this needs sensible discussion between two sides that currently distrust each other.