Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 21
21
Acknowledged
Paragraph: 96
Maintain Forestry England monitoring of new woodland compliance with UK Forestry Standard beyond establishment stage.
Conclusion
The reliance on the UK Forestry Standard to ensure the sustainability of planting in areas identified as ‘low risk’ could provide a proportionate risk-mitigation mechanism. For this to operate effectively it is important that Forestry England maintain its monitoring of the compliance of new woodland with the UKFS beyond the establishment stage. We discuss this issue in further detail below.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government acknowledges that UKFS compliance checking is currently limited to grant applications and felling license assessments, and states it is considering what additional resources would be needed for greater woodland management oversight beyond the establishment stage.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
96
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government · verbatim extract
Acknowledged
Most woodland creation in England is supported by grant funding. The application approval process ensures that woodland creation proposals and the early stages of woodland establishment are compliant with the UKFS. There is less certainty around compliance during forest operations that are not grant aided, such as thinning, in existing woodlands. The Forestry Commission recognises this and has recently completed a survey of a small number of sites where forest operations were either active or recently completed. No serious breaches of the standard were found. The Forestry Commission intend to carry out periodic reviews of UKFS compliance, timed to influence future UKFS review processes, and to inform the direction of future research projects that could help improve compliance or address problems that compliance reviews may discover. Earth Observation and remote sensing are already used to establish the impact of large disturbances, such as Storm Arwen in 2021. This technology has also been used to investigate cases of alleged illegal felling, to monitor the presence of invasive species and deer populations. It is very likely that it will be used in the future in forestry inventory and forecast work, tree health surveillance and compliance with conditions associated with felling licences and grant agreements that are required UKFS compliance.
Read the full response on Parliament ↗