Defiant gardeners have won their battle to stay on their "poison" allotments.

The gardeners prepared for a dig-in after being given notices to quit by the end of the year by Bradford Council.

Experts say the ground in Frizinghall is contaminated with arsenic, and also lead and cadmium, which will reach unsafe levels by December.

The Council said the allotment holders would have to be uprooted while work was carried out, and offered them sites nearby.

But the green-fingered tenants say they are in the pink after eating their prime vegetables for years and are determined they will not move.

Now their ward councillor, Phil Thornton (Lab, Shipley East), has told them they can keep their greenhouses and sheds on their strip at the side of the growing areas and need not move out while the land is being decontaminated

He says the Council - which has no funds at present to do the work - will try to get outside cash to carry out the work as soon as possible.

Today Ron Craig, the chairman of Frizinghall Allotments Association, said they were pleased.

"We are quite happy to let a growing season pass without doing any planting, as long as we can stay on site.

"But we will not be completely happy until we receive official letters from the legal department telling us our notices to quit are lifted."

He said the Telegraph & Argus had helped to settle the dispute by telling their story on its front page and prompting action.

Councillor Thornton said they had reached a truce but now needed funding to carry out the work.

Mr Craig said: "I am more optimistic than I have ever been but I am not lying down.

"We are getting somewhere at last."

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