ALLOTMENT holders are being forced to give up their plots to make room for a cemetery expansion.

Half the 50 allotments at Cemetery Fields, Northallerton, will be lost when the neighbouring graveyard expands to provide enough burial space for the next 40 years.

Efforts to find alternative sites in the town have proved fruitless, prompting fears that Northallerton could face a severe shortage of allotments.

The Northallerton and Romanby Joint Burial Committee aims to create extra graveyard space in Cemetery Fields under a £226,000 project.

Existing burial space in Northallerton is expected to run out in three years and landscaping work on the new cemetery could take up to a year.

Maurice Aislabie, chairman of Northallerton Allotment Association, said holders had always been aware they would have to leave the site at some time.

But he said it was disappointing to be losing the allotments when demand was high.

He said: "We are concerned about it, but there is nothing we can do, and we don't have any objections to what the burial committee is doing.

"We have been there for 26 years, but we have always known that at some stage we would have to leave.

"We have been promised we will get half of it back at some stage.

"My concern is that there are a lot of people who virtually live on their allotments and they will be left without anywhere to go."

He said the association had approached Northallerton Town Council and Hambleton District Council over possible alternative sites, but had been told none were available.

He said: "There are 50 plots down there and they have always been let, but when people found out this site was being taken away a lot of them packed up.

"But we would still love to keep half the site and I could fill it tomorrow if I knew we were getting it."

Cliff Wilkinson, clerk to the burial committee, said tenders had gone out for the initial development of Cemetery Fields, with work expected to start next year.

He said the burial committee had undertaken that the allotments association would have access to half the site once the development was complete.