I’ve been working on a plan, recently, to get some more trees in the ground. Nothing new there to anyone who has visited this blog before, but I thought it was time for an update.

 

I chair the Northwest Forestry Framework (soon to change it’s name to something more in keeping with the political zeitgeist, but more on that another time) and have been working with a whole host of people, both in the Northwest but also in the national offices of the Forestry Commission, to put forward several areas in the Northwest as possible pilot areas for a major national push on woodland creation.

 

As an area of England with a level of woodland cover well below the national average, there is scope and opportunity for large scale tree planting and development right across Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside. When you look at the statistics, we are poorly served in these areas when it comes to woodlands.

 

The good news is that each of these areas has also developed clever and canny new models for woodland creation that deliver multiple benefits and move beyond traditional public sector investment models towards partnerships with business and the voluntary sector.

 

It’s all very, ‘Big Society’.

 

Now these areas are signing up to a ‘forestry manifesto’ that I’ve been touting around the region since the start of the year. This manifesto seeks, over 40 years, to deliver a doubling in woodland cover, to have an immediate and significant impact on carbon stores, timber production, environmental resilience, green jobs, local image and happiness and wellbeing; this is a vision of an intensely productive, as well as beautiful, landscape.

 

Show me the money

 

It all sounds very motherhood and apple pie, but who is going to pay? There are a number of existing or planned investment models across the Northwest which warrant further development and replication elsewhere. These include:

 

• Woodland planting as a key aspect of PFI (Public Finance Initiative) contracts and, specifically, waste management strategies;

 

• Working with large-scale developers to create an attractive setting for investment and adding value to land-based asset portfolios;

 

• Practical business partnerships providing improved local area ‘image’, biomass resources or climate change adaptation;

 

• Woodland or green infrastructure bonds, where investors can support woodland creation by investing in a bond that provides non-fiscal benefits in lieu of interest payments as part of a CSR or sustainability strategy;

 

• Developing a suite of woodland creation opportunities alongside community interest levies/section 106 arrangements where developers support environmental works as a condition of their planning consents; and

 

• Integrated land use planning to maintain and improve water quality.

 

• Landscape-scale, economically-linked programmes to aid recovery and local economic resilience.

 

Some of the above options sound a little jargon laden, but they have the potential to help us get some trees in the ground, and that’s what I care about. Each of these investment models is either already in play across one of our counties or city regions, or is ready to be developed by one or more partners.

 

Breaking down barriers

 

From the discussions we’ve been having so far, these partners are ready to start delivering woodland creation, on the ground, if certain barriers to progress can be removed. These barriers include:

 

• The ‘Hope value’ attached to under-utilised land and the misplaced notion that new woodlands permanently remove large areas from possible future development;

 

• More flexible, short to medium term land use deals and frameworks that will allow the notion of ‘temporary’ woodland to be pursued;

 

• Clear signals on the future of carbon pricing and accounting in relation to woodland creation;

 

• The lack of a mechanism for business to report on the carbon benefits of woodland creation programmes as part of their net greenhouse gas emissions; and

 

• The consideration of effective tax regimes to encourage investment in new planting in areas of need as a way for business to play a part in ‘big society’ programmes.

 

Making it happen

 

So the exciting thing is that if we bash down a few barriers, win over some hearts and minds, and pull our fingers out, the partners in the Northwest Forestry Forum are ready to begin work piloting a new wave of woodland creation using innovative funding and delivery models such as these.

 

More trees, in the ground, delivering a huge range of benefits.

 

And the track record for delivery across the region is solid and impressive, with the Community Forests (e.g. Mersey Forest and Red Rose Forest) having already planted 12 million trees and millions more having been planted through the Forestry Commission’s Capital Modernisation Fund and Newlands programme.

 

Here are some more tangible examples of where can start planting.

 

Real life example - Mersey Belt

 

There is an immediate opportunity for an ‘Adapting the Landscape’ pilot across what has been coined the ‘Atlantic Gateway’, connecting the twin city regions of Greater Manchester and Merseyside with the Northern areas of Cheshire.

 

Such a pilot would be focused on woodland creation in and around key physical development sites and along transport corridors; on productive forestry including biomass; on leisure, recreation and the ‘visitor economy’.

 

Funding can be drawn from business through receipts from soils deposition, community interest levies, Section 106 agreements, through an easing of planning constraints if the creation of greenspace is assured and possible short-term amnesties against business tax.

 

Delivery partners would include large development businesses in the area, as well as the key Local Enterprise Partnerships and the voluntary sector in the form of community forests and Groundwork.

 

Real life example - Lancashire

 

In Lancashire there is already an innovative model for woodland creation in the form of the county’s ‘Woodlands from Waste’ programme linked to a soon to be commissioned, 25 year, £2 billion Waste PFI.

 

A partnership of Lancashire County Council, 13 Local Authorities and their commercial contractor, Global Renewables, alongside the Forestry Commission, will be planting and managing 100,000 new trees per year for the next 25 years - creating woodland on brown and greenfield sites across the area. The cost is being met through savings on landfill taxes and, in addition, is utilising a growing medium by-product of the waste treatment process.

 

Real life example - Cumbria and Lancashire

 

Water company United Utilities has pioneered a programme called the Sustainable Catchment Management Programme (SCaMP), working with farmers and land managers, local authorities, Government and other conservation organisations to influence how water catchment areas are managed and properly funded. The objective is a double win of improved water quality (under the European Water Framework Directive) as well as conservation of the natural environment. UU’s partner in the programme has been the RSPB.

 

The project has leveraged in public funding to help deliver an increase in clough woodland, with 450 hectares of upland oak woodland to be planted, some 300,000 trees being planted and 200km of fencing to allow for moorland restoration and woodland planting. It has carried out the work in two of its four estate areas: Bowland in Lancashire, and the Southern estate including Longdendale, the Goyt and parts of the Peak District.

 

Meeting Defra’s priorities

 

It may sound a bit arcane, but in the absence of any major eco bills or statements, there are still some clear signals as to what the new government’s priorities are, not least in the departmental ‘Structural Reform Plans’ which have beenpublished. How does the above outlined activity ‘fit’ with the three key priorities outlined in Defra’s structural reform plan?

 

The woodland creation opportunities highlighted can directly contribute to and foreshorten the delivery of each priority and relevant actions and milestones. Specifically:

 

Support and develop British farming and encourage sustainable food production

 

Defra’s objective is to enhance the competitiveness and resilience of the whole food chain, including farms and the fish industry, to ensure a secure, environmentally sustainable and healthy supply of food with improved standards of animal welfare.

 

Woodland creation can contribute to this objective in a number of ways. It will provide affordable measures of support for hill farmers via diversifying farm incomes e.g. through timber sales and reduced energy cost savings through woodfuel.

 

It will also help with animal husbandry, particularly in the uplands, primarily through the provision of shelter. Woodland creation will also lead to more sustainable, integrated land use where for example, higher value agricultural land holdings can be protected through woodland creation ‘upstream’ stablising soils and alleviating flooding.

 

Biodiversity and landscape

 

Defra’s objective is to enhance and protect the natural environment, including biodiversity and the marine environment, by reducing pollution and preventing habitat loss and degradation.

 

A pilot of new woodland creation in the Mersey Belt, Cumbria or Lancashire will contribute to this in a number of ways.

 

It will deliver more green spaces for local communities, new native habitats and wildlife corridors needed to help wildlife adapt to expected climate change impacts. It will help stabilise soils, improve water quality and reclaim damaged, brownfield land. In addition there will be increased tree planting by private sector and civic societies.

 

Support a strong and sustainable green economy, resilient to climate change

 

Defra’s objective is to encourage businesses, people and communities to manage and use natural resources in a sustainable manner and to reduce waste; and work to ensure that the UK economy is resilient to climate change.

 

A woodland creation pilot will directly address this objective, as the approaches above show, it can directly provide a source of carbon storage and can be deployed in partnership with the private sector.

 

Next steps

 

As you might imagine, I’m dead keen to play these arguments out to national players - especially Defra - but also to the emerging Local Economic Partnerships which have been causing such a stir in local politics over the last few weeks.

 

In addition, this proposal will be the centrepiece of our next meeting of the Forestry Forum on November 8 of this year; if you want to come along, just let me know. We need every bit of help we can get to achieve that goal we’ve set for ourselves - a doubling of woodland cover.

 

To view the Manifesto presentation online, please click here  (You can also download the presentation from this link too.)

 

 

 

 

The next RFF forum is to be held on 8th November, at the Mechanics Institute (103 Princess Street, (Major Street entrance), Manchester, M1 6DD).

Full agenda details to follow shortly, but please register your interest in coming to this event by clicking here and following the instructions.

I’ve just been sent a story by Richard Denyer of the Forestry Commission’s Regional Advisory Committee (thanks Richard) about a possible new British Standard that could see thousands of mature trees across Britain chopped down for posing a risk to human health, even though more people die each year in the bath, falling downstairs or toppling out of bed than get squashed by a toppling tree: in fact, you’re only twice as likely to come to a grisly end through brutal contact with bark than you are to get struck by lightening.

Now the British media loves a story about the nanny state curtailing an ever more paltry set of personal freedoms but this one does give cause for alarm. As reported in the Economist, the Daily Mail and the Times last week, every tree in the country could be up for inspection under the new BSI number and could face felling if they pose a risk. Landowners will be overjoyed no doubt, being required to inspect each tree, every year, possibly paying for the cost of the inspection as well as registering for the new British Standard.

This coming as those of us concerned with trees, woodland and forestry become increasingly worried about the unchecked and relatively unmonitored ‘chainsaw massacre’ that is befalling urban tree cover and which the Northwest Forestry Framework is trying to get to grips with through a region-wide assessment of how we are faring with regard to trees and tree cover in our towns and cities.

It may be a small storm and I may be misreading the press reports, but this is one to watch, and watch carefully.

The BSI’s draft recommendations for tree safety are out for public consultation until the end of July. If you want to comment, it could cost you though as the download carries a price tag of £36 for non-members.

http://www.bsi-global.com/en/Shop/Publication-Detail/?pid=000000000030174363

Natural England have recently announced the launch of a new Countdown 2010 Biodiversity Action Fund. They have secured £5 million for the next three years to fund projects run by Voluntary Conservation Organisations. Natural England will be funding projects that can demonstrate how they will benefit BAP priority species and habitats in England through working at a landscape-scale, developing the evidence base, protecting the best sites, working in partnerships and being sustainable. The application process will be open from 22 May to 18 July 2008 and Natural England hope to be able to announce awards by the start of September. Awards will be for a min of £25k per year and up to a max of £250k per year.
Full details are now available on the external website: www.naturalengland.org.uk/conservation/grants-funding/countdown.htm

Main contact: Trudie Mills (Biodiversity, Plants & Fungi Team) - 01733 455185.

Email: countdown2010@naturalengland.org.uk

The buildings we live and work in, through their construction and then through the energy we use to heat or light them, account for over a quarter of our region’s carbon emissions. For the residential sector alone, this represents 17 million tonnes of carbon, a figure which the Northwest has committed to reducing by at least 7 million tonnes by 2020.

Trees, woodland and the timber industry can play a pivotal role in helping us tackle climate change head on, whether it is reducing our energy use or helping us adapt to the changes in climate which, no matter what we do, cannot be avoided.

Imagine, for a moment, asking a team of talented engineers to invent a single device that could absorb and then lock up carbon, provide a carbon neutral building material or energy source, help stabilise vulnerable soils, provide a flood management system and offer a source of shade and cooling as the planet’s temperatures begin to rise.

And then imagine asking them to make it a beautiful and inspiring object too, one that created a wildlife habitat and pollution filter, to boot.

It’s a simple and powerful proposition. Trees and timber offer a sustainable and immediate solution to a host of climate-related challenges. Using wood as a building material, from timber frames or cladding through to entire constructions made from wood, has to be a priority for architects, engineers and developers who want to take climate change seriously.

The low energy solution

How much could this save? A significant amount. Replacing a single cubic metre of concrete or red brick with the same volume of timber can save around one tonne of carbon dioxide. Concrete uses five times as much energy to produce as wood; steel uses six times as much. If you expand this out to an average two-storey dwelling, using a timber frame alone could save four tonnes of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to driving 14,000 miles by car. If the 26,000 additional households forecast for the Northwest by 2026 were all built in this way, we could save over 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, through timber frames alone.

The switch from materials with a high level of ‘embodied’ energy such as steel or concrete is just one way in which wood can help reduce the carbon footprint of our building stock, but wood is also a good insulator, too, whether used for frames, windows or cladding. Timber’s natural insulation properties mean that double-glazed or even triple-glazed windows for example can achieve the highest energy window ratings, beating alternatives such as PVC or aluminium.

Europe’s great carbon ‘sink’

Using wood as a construction material also increases the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by Europe’s standing forest, this is because more than 99 per cent of the timber used in the UK is softwood from European forests and as these forests are managed sustainably, we plant more new trees every time we extract timber destined for sawmills and processing plants right across the continent. In fact, European forest cover is increasing by over 9,000 square kilometres every single year.

Add to the product mix the other environmental benefits of wood: it is organic, enhances biodiversity, can be easily recycled and avoids the need for quarrying and the extraction of aggregates, and you have an unbeatable case for timber as a truly sustainable construction material.

A growing market

The market is starting to see the value in wood. Timber frame housing increased by 15 per cent in 2005, for example, while other types of construction actually saw their markets decline. Timber framed housing now represents 20 per cent of new build and the projections for 2008 are that one in every four homes built will be timber framed, but we could do much, much more. Globally around 70 per cent of homes are built, often entirely, from wood and as close to home as Scotland, the market share for timber framed housing is a much healthier 73 per cent. We have ample scope for improvement.

We can do more with timber today, too. Traditionally timber framed houses could reach two or three storeys at most but these levels are increasing to five, six or seven stories and with engineering performance increasing all the time, the industry research body TRADA expects these performance levels to increase still further. The construction times for a timber framed building are shorter, too and they offer a safer, more efficient construction site with a typical house being weather tight in less than five days.

The beauty of wood

The materials are available, the environmental credentials are strong and the research shows that wood can perform when compared to the heavier, less sustainable alternatives. The challenge now is to achieve a significant ‘step change’ in the commissioning, designing and building of homes and workplaces that are made all or in part, from wood. Wood is certainly getting some good press. Ted Cullinan, keynote speaker at the Northwest Forestry Framework’s ‘Form>Wood’ event and RIBA Gold Medal winner this year is known for his timber constructions, in particular the Downland Gridshell in West Sussex. Architects like Sheppard Robson are developing affordable new housing forms - such as the Lighthouse - out of wood and in the Northwest region have shown how spectacular wood can be through their proposed wood cladding of a car park in Penrith. Wooden buildings in the Northwest are also winning awards, with the Feilden Bradley Clegg-designed Formby Pool collecting a RIBA award in 2007.

What these great, innovative designs reveal is that building from wood offers a real opportunity from public buildings and cultural venues through to the new houses we know we will have to construct as our demand increases for new homes regionally and nationally. The beauty of wood - aside from its obvious aesthetic credentials - is that it offers a more sustainable future for developments both large and small.

The form really should be wood.

Sources: Northwest Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2007, Forestry Commission Forests and Climate Change, Northwest Housing Statement 2007, Wood for Good, UK Timber Frame Association

A couple of years ago I added up all of the figures for tree planting across England’s Northwest. The statistics were drawn from the preceding five years and were made up of contributions from our Community Forests, local authorities, Forestry Commission, Northwest Regional Development Agency and Groundwork, to name just a few of the key players.

The bottom line, once the sums had been totted up, was a new tree being planted every ten seconds in this great region of ours. An impressive figure. A ‘killer stat’ to be proud of.

What I didn’t factor in, of course, was whether de facto levels of tree cover were going up or down, whether our ancient trees were being adequately protected or whether our support for new woodland areas was resulting in an increase or decrease in rates of tree planting.

These are some of the trickier issues that our Delivery Group has started to grapple with on behalf of the wider Northwest Forestry Framework community and in 2008 we’d like to report back to you on the progress we’re making, particularly on measuring levels of urban tree cover across the region. We believe that our urban spaces should be greener than ever, with all the climatic, civic and marketing advantages that green space delivers, and we’d like to get a handle on how we’re doing.

As my colleagues have set out elsewhere on this Blog, we’ve been making progress on working with industry, supporting the land reclamation sector, boosting the prospects for biomass and developing new, pioneering partnerships such as those with the health service or prison sectors.

Across the region, those working for woodlands and forestry have ensured in 2007 that we are successfully delivering against all of the major actions in our action plan or have instigated work to make sure that they’re tackled in 2008. Of the 47 actions in our plan, 43 are underway.

So I’m pleased to say that from my perspective we’ve hit a good number of our targets and are more than aware of those we need to focus on in the year ahead. We’re not resting on our laurels and we know there’s a lot to be done, but during our first full year of operation, the Northwest Forestry Framework has made real progress against our ‘Agenda for Growth’. What out for more of the same in 2008.

County Hall, Preston

1 October 2007

Here’s what happened - you came to the event, helped debate our forestry future, shared great ideas and great feedback, used a pretty handsome number of Post-It notes and, I hope, left feeling that you’d gained an overview of how we’re progressing and helped to refine our programme for the future. I’m really grateful to the 70-odd people who took the time to be with us last Monday, your time is much appreciated.

We’ve had a chance to analyse the feedback forms you gave us and I’m very pleased to report that when it came to the usefulness of the event for you, 67% of you felt that it was a ‘good’ event, 17% told us it was ‘excellent’ (thanks for that!) and another 17% told us it was ‘adequate’. Nobody rated the event as ‘poor’ but if you would like to tell us what we can do to improve things next time, let me know or (in truly transparent fashion) why not paste yout comments up here?

As for the progress we’re making more generally across the Forestry Framework, 18% of you thought progress was ‘adequate’, 73% thought we were making good progress and 9% thought that progress was ‘excellent’.

Thanks for your feedback and as I said at the Forum meeting, we plan to work a lot harder now to engage, communicate and listen to you, our key stakeholders in the future. We’ve had a year getting our house in order, finding out about who is working on what and generating a few ideas on projects and priorities, but now we need to re-engage with you, the people that make things happen on the ground.

Steve

The phrase ‘joined-up’ is the scourge of political sketch-writers and Plain English campaigners everywhere but it is, undoubtedly, a phrase that begs to be used in relation to the delivery of the Forestry Framework for England’s Northwest.

So use it we will.

We have spent the last year and a half joining things up and getting things done.

Our partnership is joined up: Government departments, local authorities and the voluntary sector are all playing a part in steering the delivery of our Framework. Our sector has also reached out and struck new and practical partnerships, such as with the health sector or our regional environmental technologies champion, Envirolink Northwest.

We have also joined-up our projects and actions where we can, in areas such as supporting the timber sector or greening our urban areas, we have seen different actions in our Framework bundled up into projects that could help us deliver on a number of fronts.

It may be jargon, but ‘joined-up’ works well to describe the Northwest’s Forestry Framework and the way it works.

Getting things done

As a cursory glance over the updates on this blog will show, there is co-ordinated activity across the region taking forward a host of actions set out in our ‘Agenda for Growth’. Of the 47 actions in our plan, 32 are underway and the remainder will almost all be coming onstream in the coming year.

So across our six areas of action we are genuinely helping to bring the businesses working in woodlands and forestry together more closely into a recognisable sector; we are enhancing our region’s image through greenspace development and we have plans for the transformation of gateway sites; we are supporting ‘greener’ farming and seeing the restoration of natural areas; we are making good links with the health sector, with education and with the prison service; we are putting efforts into developing biomass as a sustainable energy source within the region; and we are staying focused, in our sixth action area, on how we can keep improving our performance as a sector not least with the launch of a new Rural Development Programme for England.

And I am particularly pleased that we are planning a few, signature projects out of the Forestry Framework ‘stable’ that hit a number of our targets across differing action areas. These include a plan for a conference and PR campaign called ‘Form>Wood’ which will target the architecture, design and urban development sectors with the message that wood is the sustainable and contemporary material of choice. We are also launching a programme to really get to the heart of whether our urban tree cover is as healthy as we think it is or should be and will use the results of our surveying work to raise the game of our local authorities, in particular.So there is plenty of progress in greening the region and supporting the sector, but there are many, many challenges that remain.

Raising our game

We must continue to expand our partnerships beyond the usual suspects. We need to develop more joint projects like the recent Land Remediation Network we’ve established with Envirolink and we seriously need to improve our linkages to the private sector.

We need to ask ourselves, honestly, if we are trying to do too much or if the Framework is adding enough value to the region’s endeavours in our area.

We must ensure we are the very opposite of a talking shop: we must be a source of action, activity and transformation.

We have to reach out and ensure that a much wider audience hears of our progress and finds out what they can do to partner up with us and help deliver our programme. We must create more of a ‘buzz’ now that our projects and activities are taking form.

And we have to improve the entire sector’s performance in a few key areas.

We have to get better at influencing regional strategies and helping shape our region’s future; a new Regional Economic Strategy is being developed and we have on the horizon the prospect of an Integrated Regional Strategy which should have woodlands, forestry and greenspace as a key component; the true ‘setting’ for prosperity and growth.

We must do our part to deliver against the region’s Climate Change Action Plan, particularly in the adaptation to climate change impacts where woodlands forestry has the power seriously help to improve the resilience of both our rural and urban areas.

Finally we need to strive for ever better levels of design and delivery. If we are given the incredible opportunity of programmes like Newlands we must create spaces and places that inspire and transform communities; that rival anything, anywhere in the world; that make England’s Northwest a region that attracts talent, investment and trade.

What comes next?

In 2008 we will be working to freshen up our Action Plan in the face of new national and regional developments but there will be no new strategies or visions or frameworks in the next few years; we have our plan, our stakeholders have agreed it and we will be sticking at it until all of our actions are delivered and all of our promises are made good.

Alongside a few other key areas of regional endeavour, such as the knowledge economy, climate change and work to achieve greater levels of community cohesion; our sector - woodlands and forestry - has pivotal role to play in delivering a more sustainable region for the future, a greener future for England’s Northwest.