27 February 2025
We would occasionally get feedback that finding an allotment was hard and that a map with the location of allotments would more useful.
“Looking for allotments in Plymouth and can only filter by postcode - completely useless when you don't know the postcode of different areas of Plymouth. A simple map or even A-Z list would be far more useful. Gave up in frustration.”
website feedback
"would be useful to have a map of your allotments to see the closest to me."
Form feedback
"It would be great to have a map of the allotments as opposed to have to enter their postcode individually."
Form feedback
Before
Allotments were grouped in accordions sorted by the first part of the post code
This isn’t particularly helpful as most users don’t know the areas cover by the first part of a post code.
It also isn’t useful for finding your nearest allotment, there’s a good chance your nearest allotment site is in a different postcode area.
For example anyone living in the ‘PL1’ area, their nearest allotment site will be in the PL2, PL3 or PL4 area.
After
We created a directory and directory pages for each allotment site. You can now find an allotment by using the map, scrolling through the directory or using the search. You can even use the original method of searching by first part of the post code using the search facets.
The allotments team helpfully provided us with all the What3Words locations of the allotment sites which saved us trying to figure out where they were from a satellite picture.
We’ll be working with the allotments team to add more content about the individual allotment sites later down the road.