Forest furore

After the extraordinary outcry from the public and outdoors groups in response to the government’s plans to sell off England’s publicly-owned woodland, Mark Rowe investigates why they were so unpopular, how their hasty abandonment came about, and what happens next

One thing we know that we didn’t know six months ago: the English really, really care about their forests. Railways and other public sectors have been privatised by successive governments, but the proposed sell-off of state-owned woodlands sparked a whirlwind of throbbing, white-knuckled anger on an unprecedented scale. An abrupt U-turn, announced back in February, has enabled everyone to pause for breath. But no-one is popping open the champagne just yet: the future of nationalised woodlands still remains uncertain and, as the whole saga revealed, the issue remains far from clear cut.

Immediate public backlash
The government’s proposals, first mooted late last year, suggested selling up to 15% of the estate (40,000 hectares) over the next four years as part of Defra’s spending review commitments. It was hoped this would raise £100million. The rest would be split up into different categories: forests classified as heritage and community woodland would be given to charities to run; some commercial forests would be leased to logging firms; and ‘mixed’ woods would be offered to community groups to buy at market value. If they could not find the money, then they would be sold on the open market.

Opposition began immediately, most publicly through the online group 38 Degrees, which swiftly secured 500,000 petitioners demanding the sell-off be scrapped. Once the small print emerged, outlining how leases, funding and access would be managed, mainstream organisations, such as the Ramblers, also opposed the plan. While Defra and the Forestry Commission (FC) insisted that no land would be sold off unless guarantees over public access were secured, very few people believed this would be the case in practice. “There were three nasty clauses in the [Public Bodies (Reform)] bill that gave the minister the ultimate power to dispose of any land that he wanted, without consultation,” said Ian Standing, secretary of Hands of Our Forests (HOOF), an opposition group in the Forest of Dean.

Critics smelt a very large rat. “The government held out an olive branch, talking about how heritage forests would be secure, but ‘heritage forest’ is such a wishy-washy definition. We don’t have any forests up here that meet that description,” said Mike Morton, a spokesman for Save Lakeland’s Forests. “Commercially valuable forests in the Lake District are tied up with leisure facilities – everything from the RAC rally to kids’ orienteering. If it was privately owned you would have no idea about what access was allowed.”

Morton points to the local case of Rigg Wood, by Coniston Water, which was sold last year and the gates padlocked. “The car park was the first thing to be closed. You are allowed to walk there, but there is no encouragement and you have to be fit to clamber over the gates and know your rights. That excludes most people.

“There is no guarantee that paths would be maintained if they fell into private hands. It doesn’t take long for the natural world to take over, cover paths and block streams –especially between spring and summer. Whether private owners would want to invest in maintenance, I don’t know. But I know that the Forestry Commission do.”

No safeguards for access
The Ramblers, along with other outdoors organisations, faced criticism for not immediately opposing the proposed sell off. “From the outset we came at this from the angle of access rather than ownership,” said Justin Cooke, the Ramblers’ senior policy officer. “The government said they were committed to access, but they did not show us the detail. We were left in the position of either taking the government’s word, or following the likes of 38 Degrees before we knew the facts. Everyone said we should be jumping up and down, but we had to know what the consultation said first.

“When it was published, it was full of holes, and up to 50% of the estate could be effectively sold off without any protection. But the government insisted they wanted to protect access and asked us what they should do. So we said they had to withdraw the clauses relating to ministerial powers for selling off land in the Public Bodies Bill.”

More positively, the campaign has revealed a side of the FC that many were unaware of. Although it continues to produce large commercially valuable forests and woodlands, it has spent the past 30 years winding back the clock, clear-felling many of the plantations it had itself originally seeded, and planting native broadleaf trees such as birch and oak, enhancing biodiversity and encouraging and promoting access. “It has highlighted some of the work that perhaps people didn’t know that we did,” said a spokeswoman.

“There’s a continuity about what the Forestry Commission does,” said Cooke. “You know when you visit one of their sites you will be encouraged to enjoy the access and the woodland. There’ll usually be two or three signed routes, accessible gates, and a welcoming, protected feel. That feeling is what we were most worried about losing. Most of these woodlands are used by local people living on the doorstep.”
That sense of loss was palpable in areas such as the Lake District, where campaigners rallied, particularly around Grizedale forest. “The Lake District is full of communities, villages and towns surrounded by little Forestry Commission woodlands – 39 of them – which are widely, intensely used by local people,” said Morton.

In turn, this sentiment goes some way to explaining the most striking phenomenon of the whole saga: the fury that the proposals invoked. “So many people are against it, right across the social spectrum – from the lady on her horse to the mother from a council estate pushing her buggy through the woods on a Sunday afternoon,” said Morton. The Forest of Dean proved another lightning rod for opposition, with HOOF up and running almost within hours of the announcement. “The biggest fear locally was that if the forest fell into private hands it would be cut down and built on,” said Standing. “The government said the forest is protected but my experience is that planning laws are never really helpful. This forest has been so ‘got at’ over the centuries that it’s at a crucial point – any more development could tip it over the edge. The Forest of Dean is lived in by so many people, who have done so for generations. People here enjoy ancient privileges to graze sheep, freedom to roam, access. It’s almost a little country and they don’t like being told what will happen to it.”

Intriguingly, Standing also suspects the nationwide opposition hints at a primordial link to our ties to the earth. “I think there may well be some folk memory at play. The British do feel very deeply about their woods, they have some residual love of freedom of access, and that made them very uppity over this. It’s not so long ago that our ancestors were kicked off the land by the enclosures.” This sentiment is echoed by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, who campaigned against the sell off.  “Forest are still hugely valued, even by people who cannot access them very often. There’s a sense that they have been handed down to us,” she said.

Numbers don’t add up
The initial argument put forward by the government was that the sell-off would make money. But in 2009/2010, the FC made a loss of £20.6m, despite a profit of £12.3m from timber harvesting. The major losses were £13.8m from forest regeneration and £17.2m from recreation, conservation and heritage – prompting fears that the profitable timber arm would squeeze out recreation.
Campaigners believe woodland sales attract private buyers because no inheritance tax is payable on forest holdings – something which saw Terry Wogan, Phil Collins and other celebrities fund Caledonian pine plantations in Scotland in recent years.

It’s pretty clear that the challenge for any charity taking on a forest would be maintaining an income. Woodlands typically sell for £1,300-£8,000 per acre, according to John Clegg, at John Clegg & Co chartered foresters. Like other organisations, the Wildlife Trusts made no secret of their interest in buying or leasing woodlands, but not on the scale envisaged by the government. “There were some parts of the consultation that we thought did have real value,” said Julian Roughton, chief executive of Suffolk Wildlife Trust. “The reality is that we and organisations like us could only ever buy a very small number of these woods. The costs were enormous; it wasn’t feasible.”

Meanwhile, proposed cuts to the FC may, campaigners warn, leave the prospect of a sell-off very much alive. A government-appointed panel will report back next spring on the future of policy for forests and woodland in England. In the meantime, the Forestry Commission faces 25% cuts and the prospect of 250 job losses in England – 29% of the workforce – and 100 more in Scotland.  And the existing plans to sell off 40,000 hectares of woodland a year, around 15% of the Commission’s land in England, have only been temporarily suspended.  “I wonder whether the government isn’t setting the Forestry Commission up to fail, so that it can have another crack at this,” said Standing.

Everything appears to hang on the composition of the expert panel, which was announced in March. The 12 members include Ramblers Chief Executive Tom Franklin, along with the heads of the RSPB, National Trust, Wildlife trusts and Woodland Trust, as well as the Confederation of Forest Industries, the Country Land and Business Association, and Clinton Devon Estates, a farming and forestry operation. There are no places for cyclists, horsed riders, or local community action groups on the panel, which is headed by James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool.

Standing worries that it will be dominated by “tub-thumping privateers”, and points out the panel is not being given the option of retaining the status quo. Lord Clark of Windermere, a former chairman of the Forestry Commission, who was involved in the Save Lakeland’s forests campaign, added: “The panel is stuffed full of people who represent organisations that could benefit from the Government disposing of public forests. That means they have a potential conflict of interest.”

Like everyone else, the Ramblers are unable to pick much out of the runes at this stage. “The Forestry Commission has always bought and sold land – it has been good at protecting some, not so good with others. The only certainty is that, given the public spending review, Defra still has to sell some woodland some time in the next four years,” said Justin. “How they do it and when they do it, nobody really knows.”

Middle image by Jim Champion from geograph.org.uk