It is with a very heavy heart that we announce the closing of our Harvest @ Home Bicester branch, effective 1st of May 2026.

We have invested over £60,000 in improving Bicester’s greenspace gardens since 2020. We are very proud of what we have accomplished in Bicester, thanks to the legacy of our incredible coordinators, especially over the last three years under our most recent coordinator, Amanda Groom.

We have waited since 2022 for Bicester Town Council to sign a land-use agreement granting us the formal right to work in the gardens. Despite years of regular correspondence, reminders, and assurances, this has not materialised. Without legal permission to operate, we have no security of tenure, are ineligible for most funding, and are exposed to liability. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue our involvement in greenspace improvement in the town. 

Celebrating Harvest @ Home’s legacy in Bicester

We have had a presence in Bicester since our founding in 2020, achieving some brilliant successes and building great partnerships. Over the years. we have invested over 3000 paid staff hours in Bicester growing spaces and substantial capital funds to create safe spaces for the community which is scientifically proven to increase not only physical but also emotional and social wellbeing.

Since 2022, we have worked hard to transform the Garth Park Walled Garden in particular and, in that space alone, Cherwell Collective has welcomed 281 volunteers, 1215 households, including 1,008 adults and 368 children, including highly vulnerable people, to this very special place.

What we took on in October 2022 was an overgrown, unproductive, and neglected space, which has since become a respite for hundreds of people in the community. Today, some of us who were involved in the initial work days in the space have shared photos with one another and reflected on the challenges and rewards that space has offered our team over the years. 

Recently, our Harvest @ Home coordinator has worked diligently to secure a local company, Natta, to remove a dangerous structure in the Garth Park garden in order to make it safe to use again, following a spate of break ins and criminal damage that left the site a danger to the public. 

That space will finally be reopened for use on Friday at 10:30 am in a celebration of the hard work of Amanda Groom, our Bicester lead for the past three years. The Bicester community has been very lucky to have Amanda working for them, and we are heartbroken that this project must come to an end.

We are also grateful to our partnerships with Cherwell District Council, Natta, Bicester Village, Bardwell School, Nai’s House, Wild Oxfordshire, Bicester Green, Bicester Fridge, Bicester Green Gym, BBOWT, Community Action Groups, and more which have made our work here over the years so impactful. We take great pride in the thriving space our collaboration made possible.

The need for a land use agreement

Two of the three spaces we have managed in Bicester are owned by Bicester Town Council: the Garth Park Walled Garden and Grebe Road Garden. In 2022, Bicester Town Council voted to sign a land use agreement to support our continued work in the gardens. Over the years, we have been repeatedly assured that Bicester Town Council are happy to continue supporting us and that the agreement would soon be signed.

This, month we were told that the agreement had been signed, only to hear later that the person who signed it did not have the authority to do so. Following these recent events and the four years of waiting, Cherwell Collective’s leadership came to the difficult realisation that the promises to sign the land use agreement are not likely to be fulfilled.  To protect the wider operations, we will cease our Harvest @ Home operations in Bicester. 

We cannot continue to invest in a space without a land use agreement, which is extremely important for a variety of reasons. Here we share more on why a land use agreement is necessary in hopes that we may help other not-for-profits or charities who may find themselves in similar situations.

Partnership

Those of us leading not-for-profit work want the world to operate in an honest and productive way, with all stakeholders doing what they say they will, when they say they will do it. While partnerships are rooted in trust and common goals, they also must reflect some sort of equilibrium. 

Setting expectations around responsibility, accountability, and the boundaries of partnerships is the best way to keep relationships strong and healthy. Having a land use agreement between a council and a private company represents a commitment to that partnership and to both units sharing some responsibility for the greater goal of the project. Without the agreement, it is very easy for one partner to assume more than their fair share of the burden of the project and for trust to be broken.

Securing funding

As a small, locally led not-for-profit, the land use agreements do more than just protect us legally. They also give us a basis to apply for further funding. A lack of a land use agreement makes our work on the site ineligible for grants. Nature trusts, understandably, require evidence that a community group can operate in an area before they will fund its transformation.

We have been unable to secure funds for some time for our coordinator’s great work.

Since 2020, we have funded our Bicester Harvest @ Home work with the revenue from our Climatarian Kitchen cafe and catering services, and grants for our wellbeing and climate work not tied to specific locations. We had secured a donor willing to fund the work in the future, but upon hearing that the council had not provided a land use agreement and had not fixed the dangers on site, the donor withdrew their support.

Protection for our work

Just as a private resident is not allowed to put an extension on their neighbour’s house, we are not allowed to change the physical properties of land without an agreement with the landowner.

In the rare case of an incident on site, liability insurance operates differently with and without land use agreements. Designating responsibility for upkeep of different aspects of a space is important to make sure our activities are covered, and we can provide safe and accessible space for the entire community with confidence. 

Likewise, there are upcoming statutory changes to land protection, public access, and green spaces due to take effect in May which also render a land agreement necessary for our work. We were concerned that the necessary steps were not taken to protect our activities on council land.

Without the land use agreement, we do not have the legal right to make changes to the gardens and incur too great a risk to our small not-for-profit. If something were to go wrong, we could be considered trespassers, not to mention that anything we do could be reversed at any time without notice or discussion. 

Celebrating the legacy

In the aftermath of these events, our Bicester Harvest @ Home coordinator, Amanda, has stepped down. We are heartbroken to lose her and have decided not to attempt to replace her. There would not be anyone for many miles who could ever replace the good work she has done. As we are now unable to continue operations in Bicester, we sincerely hope that other entities with land use agreements can employ her in these spaces. She is a visionary and incredibly gifted coordinator whom we love dearly. 

We wish the community and Bicester Town Council the very best and thank everyone who have supported Amanda’s excellent impact in the community. She has worked in good faith and delivered excellence in spite of not having the basic minimum support the council could give: the legal right to put a spade in the ground.