Woodland Funding Meeting Report

Last Thursday, the 1066 farmer cluster gathered at Pickdick Farmhouse to discuss all things woodland. Joined by a great team from the Forestry commission, they delivered a variety of talks including grants for the creation of woodland, grants for managing woodland and grants for maintaining tree health and combatting disease.

English Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO)

Firstly, Emma spoke to the group abput the opportunities for creating woodland. Prior to applying for EWCO, landowners, managers an dpublic bodies can apply for a Woodland creation planning grant to fund planning for a minimum of 5 ha plots with up to £30,000 per site available. Along with a number of other requirements, the land must be in England and not in any other current schemes, however, the grant itself can be quite easily adapted to suit your objectives. There are a number of tiers to EWCO financially. The Five fundamental tiers of EWCO include:

-          Capital Costs, up to £10,200/ha for tree planting

-          Additional Contributions, up to £11,600/ha for additional benefits your site might bring such as nature recovery

-          Low Sensitivity Land payment, up to £1,100/ha on low sensitivity land (This is land of low agricultural quality)

-          Annual maintenance Payments, £400/year for 15 years

-          Actual Cost Support, contributions to cost of Infrastructure

EWCO does also offer the opportunity to benefit from private nature markets such as sustainable timber production through active coppice management and access to carbon markets through the woodland carbon code. To access the full guidance please head click here.

Woodland Management

Next we heard from Jonathan, the woodland officer acting as the point of contact and advisor to the local area. Jonathan described the three main avenues to be aware of to make sure your woodland and woodland management activities comply with the UK forestry Standard:

-          Felling licence regulations

-          Protected trees/ species/ areas

-          Notifiable pests and Diseases

He went on to emphasise the important of managing woodland and financial benefits this could bring by encouraging applications for woodland management plans. WMPs are open to any woodland over 0.5ha and can grant you:

-          Eligibility for countryside stewardship higher tier

-          £1500 followed by £30 for each additional hectare between 51 and 100 hectares, and £15 pounds for each additional hectare above 100

-          10- year felling licence

-          The opportunity to implement the plan rather then the obligation

Tree health Pilot

Our final speakers covered the tree health pilot which has run from 2021 to 2026 and focuses on tackling 5 target species and diseases:

-          Spruce, IPS

-          Ash, Ash dieback

-          Larch, Phytophthora ramorum

-          Sweet Chestnut, Sweet Chestnut Blight

-          Oak, Oak processionary moth

Of these diseases, those most prominent to the area was IPS and Ash dieback. The tree health pilot offers to fund a number of different stackable payments including restocking and biosecurity improvements to address either existing outbreaks of disease or prevent potential one. Which payment options are available will depend on the disease for example felling of trees is not available for ash dieback where as it is for IPS.

Woodland Walk

These talks were followed by a stroll through the local woods where John Allen from Tillhill who described how the local woodland was being managed including the restocking of trees they were undertaking following a breakout of IPS and some deer exclusion plots they had created for monitoring purposes.