Four years ago the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, told the House of Commons that she was ditching the coalition government’s plans to privatise the Forestry Commission (FC). “I’m sorry. We got this one wrong, but we have listened to people’s concerns,” she said.
But if you go down to the woods today, you may have a big surprise, because privatisation of our woodlands appears to be proceeding by the back door.
One of my local woods, Fineshade wood in east Northamptonshire, is owned by me, and you, and every other taxpayer, as it is owned by the Forestry Commission (FC), a non-ministerial government department. The wood is a mixture of ancient woodland (defined as having existed continuously since 1600), semi-ancient woodland and some more modern plantation.
Fineshade wood is described by the FC as “rich semi-natural native woodland”. It has dormice (a European protected species), adders (quite possibly the largest population in the East Midlands), slow worms (one of few Northamptonshire sites), great-crested newts (another European protected species), purple emperor butterflies (a national rarity) and a good selection of woodland birds including the rare nightjar. It’s also a nice place to go for a walk, and yes, people take their dogs walking there too.
Despite its wildlife, landscape and wider social value, the FC believes that Fineshade wood is the right place to plonk down 70 luxury holiday cabins, extra roads, and a sewage treatment plant. These would be built and managed by Forest Holidays, a company largely owned by venture capitalists, Lloyds Development Capital, in which the FC (ie you and me) has a small and diminishing holding. The development will be considered by East Northants Council on Wednesday evening.
The ecological assessment of the site carried out by Forest Holidays is woefully inadequate. It has been criticised by wildlife organisations including the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust and the RSPB, both of whom strongly object to the proposal. A single visit, at the wrong time of year, discovered evidence of dormice (which certainly inhabit the wood) but proper surveys have not been done. The sewage treatment plant is destined for prime dormouse habitat.
The standard of the bird surveys “fell well short of what we would advise any developer to carry out”, the RSPB said. Remember, this development is planned for our forests, on land owned by us (the FC) and yet the FC has allowed the developer (in which it owns a stake) to put inadequate ecological information into the planning system.
The Independent Panel on Forestry, set up after the government volte face on woodland privatisation, wrote: “We propose that the public forest estate should remain in public ownership and be defined in statute as land held in trust for the nation.” Luxury holiday cabins, funded by venture capitalists, and secured on a 125-year lease from the public, that will destroy the very ecological interest of one of our woods, falls very far short of that aim.
What is planned at Fineshade is privatisation by the back door. Why aren’t the bodies that screamed about forest privatisation fighting this proposal with equal vigour?
Forest Holidays has nine existing developments, all on FC land, some of which, especially that in the Forest of Dean, raise serious ecological concerns. It plans another 75 holiday cabins on FC land at Houghton, West Sussex, in the South Downs National park, which raises similar concerns according to the Hampshire County Council’s ecologist.
Are our forests safe in the FC’s hands? Some think not and have launched a petition to fight the plans.