Aarhus politicians target oversized allotment garden homes
Tuesday 22nd September 2026 on 21:45 in
Denmark
Up to 900 allotment gardens in Aarhus have houses that are too large, according to an assessment by Aarhus Municipality. Venstre wants the city council to take tougher action against the illegal buildings, DR reports.
The municipality reached its estimate after measuring the allotment gardens using aerial photographs in May. Around 900 of the 3,000 allotment gardens in Aarhus were assessed to be overbuilt.
“It is really bad, and it offends my sense of justice that so many people do not comply with the rules,” said Gert Bjerregaard of Venstre.
He wants Aarhus to look to Vejle Municipality, which adopted stricter local plans for its allotment garden areas in January 2024. Under those rules, houses may be no larger than 50 square metres, while annexes may be up to 30 square metres.
“We can no longer wait for new legislation. We have to deal with the problem, just as they have done in Vejle,” said Kristian Sommer, a Social Democrat and chair of Aarhus City Council’s committee for urban development and planning.
Sommer agreed that Aarhus should act against illegal conditions but said it was unclear how much it would cost to draw up new local plans for all the city’s allotment areas. He wants the municipal administration to assess the cost of Venstre’s proposal and examine whether cheaper solutions are available.
One possible alternative would be to notify owners by email or through Denmark’s e-Boks digital mailbox if their allotment house is too large, Sommer said. He argued that this would require fewer resources than Venstre’s proposal.
Venstre also wants action against people who live in the allotment gardens all year round, which is not permitted. Bjerregaard said smoke from wood-burning stoves, running heat pumps and large numbers of cars during winter were signs that people were staying overnight there.
He said the aim was to restore the original purpose of allotment gardens as a place where people living in apartments could have a retreat, with houses limited to 50 square metres.