So here’s the breaking news: our Rural Development Plan for England which runs through to 2013 was given a final thumbs up from the European Union on 7 December (with a number of changes made to the Environmental Stewardship programme and to the support programme for energy crops). This means that we can start implementing this £3.9 million programme in the New Year, with ourselves at the NWDA, Natural England and the Forestry Commission responsible for one or more of the strands of support that it brings to the rural community: clearly it will be of pivotal importance to the businesses we’re keen to support from the woodland and forestry sector. One early challenge for the three agencies outlined above is how we can make sure that we intertwine our programmes across the region to get maximum value out of the new programme of funding and, naturally, I’m going to be keenly focused on how we can boost enterprise, innovation and business growth in the sector we’re focused on here on the blog: forestry.
Ours is not the biggest sector in the region but with almost 70,000 employees and turnover of almost half a billion, we do matter and we can do a great deal to contribute to a sustainable and prosperous regional future. Ranging from forestry services to timber processing and forestry products, our sector is distinctive in that it processes and adds value to timber resources often sourced from elsewhere: we’re not the biggest source of timber but we have significant strengths when it comes to using it and working with it.
And that’s a clear theme for the future. We want to work in 2008 to continue to ’sex up’ wood as a sustainable and stylish resource for the future. Whether it’s as an architectural material, a key ingredient of landscaping or as a power source, we want to work hard in the forthcoming year to position wood as the material of choice across a whole series of supply chains. Our signature activity on this front will be a conference and campaign we’re calling ‘Form>Wood’, which we hope will raise the bar for using wood, particularly in construction and the built environment.
We kicked off work on Form>Wood this year but that’s not been the sole focus of this action area. We also have started a dialogue with members of the forestry industry in the region about better pulling them together as a sector to share information, promote themselves and achieve greater levels of shared efficiency, and I’d like to thank all of those who came to our planning meeting on this topic at the Red Rose Hub at the end of November. We’ve also seen a users and producers group established in the Mersey Forest area this year and another boost for the sector was the awarding of ‘Centre of Vocational Excellence’ status to the National School of Forestry at Myerscough College.
So good work completed but much, much more to come in the New Year, and if I had a particular wish it would be for us to establish a greater prominence here in the Northwest for the organisations that represent the sector - such as EFIP or Confor - to help us build a bigger profile for an area of industry that really can be a cornerstone of a sustainable, economically sound future for the region.
