Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Accepted
Paragraph: 40
Develop Timber in Construction roadmap with forestry vision, addressing afforestation and future timber supply.
Recommendation
We further recommend that the Timber in Construction roadmap should be closely related to, and developed in conjunction with, the Government’s vision for the forestry sector as a whole. As we recommended in our recent report, Building to net zero: costing carbon in construction, this roadmap must address the afforestation commitments made in the England Trees Action Plan, and the need to demonstrate how timber supply in future decades will help to meet growing demand for timber construction products, in a comprehensive, integrated and strategic way.
Government Response Summary
The government is developing the Timber in Construction Roadmap in conjunction with stakeholders, aiming to balance wood production with diversified supply chains and broader forest policy objectives for nature recovery and net zero.
Paragraph Reference:
40
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
In developing the Timber in Construction Roadmap Defra has been working with the stakeholders in the construction and timber and wood processing sectors to assess the scale of opportunity to increase the use of English wood in construction. As part of this we will need to consider the best way to balance wood production to meet the current construction market demand (largely C16 Sitka spruce) with encouraging the diversification of supply chains to utilise a wider variety of softwood and hardwood products. Defra is developing forest policy that will deliver the twin objectives of nature recovery and increasing the contribution forestry makes to net zero. To do this a range of woodland types and establishment techniques are being used, ranging from natural colonisation of native species through to use of fast-growing exotic species able to produce large volumes of timber and carbon sequestration quickly. We recognise that some policies aimed at habitat restoration could have an impact on timber supplies and we are considering mitigations to this.