Forest

The insidious and semi-secretive selling off of our woodlands continues to quietly confound those who thought Caroline Spellman’s axing of the nationally owned forest had been scuppered. I have been round public policy most of my life and all the signs told me that the FC were up to something notwithstanding the public statements to the contrary once it was announced that “our trees” were not going to be sold to contribute to Defra’s budget cuts. This article goes on to explain;

“The FC’s own records show that between 1997 and 2010 it sold almost 12,000 hectares of forest, in contrast with the 5,403 hectares acquired for the nation in the same period. An official account of transactions over the past decade obtained by this newspaper shows that more than 170 plots of public woodland have been sold to private buyers across the country since 2001. The largest was a 712-hectare site at Threestoneburn Wood, Northumberland, sold for £2.7m in 2007.

Despite a public outcry over the Government’s plans to sell the Forestry Commission’s entire stock of public woodland earlier this year, sales have continued. Although Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, abandoned plans to sell off England’s 258,000 hectares of state-owned woodland in February, an independent forestry panel is currently mapping out its future.”