Defiant gardeners are digging in after being ordered to leave their 'poisoned' allotments.

They have been told they must move off the land because they risk cancer from their fruit and veg.

Experts say the ground in Frizinghall is contaminated with arsenic - which has been linked by experts with cancer - and also lead and cadmium which will reach unsafe levels by December.

But the gardeners, who say they are in the pink after eating their "whopping" produce for decades, have told their landlord, Bradford Council, that they want to stay.

Now green-fingered members of Frizinghall Allotments Association are hoping to get grants available from Landfill Tax to decontaminate the land.

They have been given notice to quit at the end of the year by the cash-strapped Council which is also seeking funding to carry out the work.

Today, the chairman of Frizinghall Allotment Association Ron Craig, of Poplar Drive, Frizinghall, said they were grateful that the Council had tried to help by offering them allotments elsewhere - but they wanted to stay.

Mr Craig, 63, pictured, who has had his allotment for 34 years, said: "We're not even sure it is contaminated. There are people here in their 80s who have been growing and eating things for decades. The plants are thriving on this soil and there's nothing wrong with people who've eaten them.

"But we are not criticising the Council. They are doing everything they can and we appreciate it very much. It's just that we don't want to go."

Fellow gardener Bernard Bennett, 67, said he had put in greenhouses and wanted to stay. "There have been allotments in my family all my life and I like it here."

The contamination is believed to derive from three firms - the former Frizinghall Chemical Works, an old dyeworks, and sewage works. All the companies are believed to have shut down about 50 years ago.

There are 120 allotment plots, but the Council has stopped letting them because of the problems and only about 35 tenants remain.

The gardeners are seeking help from Bradford Environmental Action Trust (BEAT) which can award grants for environmental projects from funding it receives through landfill tax.

Ward Councillor Phil Thornton (Lab, Shipley East) said the Council had brought in an outside expert at the cost of £20,000 when the contamination was found while boreholes were being sunk for a road seven years ago. He said arsenic at certain levels could cause cancer and they had a "duty to protect people's health."

A spokesman from the Council's property services division said: "We were advised that the allotments should not be cultivated beyond the end of 1999 in order to minimise any possible health risk from the accumulative effects of the contaminants.

"We have offered them the opportunity to relocate to Red Beck in Shipley or Northcliffe in Bradford. Both are within a mile of the present site."

He said regular meetings were taking place with the association and detailed proposals have been drawn up to deal with the contamination for which funding was being sought.

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