A new grant scheme launched by Forestry Commission England to fund the creation of new woodlands across the country is now open for applications.
The Woodland Carbon Fund has been created to support the planting of multi-purpose woodlands over 30 hectares in size, providing opportunities to work in partnership at a landscape scale and to improve public access to woodland.
The fund is likely to remain open throughout 2017, but this will be dependent on interest. It offers a maximum grant rate of £6,800 per hectare or £8,500 per hectare for areas around urban fringes and for those who provide permissive access to the public.
Oliver Thompson, senior forestry manager at Savills in Lichfield is undertaking applications on behalf of landowners.
He comments: “The Woodland Carbon Fund is a demand-led grant scheme which has been designed to boost the rate of woodland creation in England, whilst also demonstrating how woodland creation can help to meet the government’s future carbon targets. There is no set closing date and this will be very much dependent on uptake so we would advise landowners to apply for this grant funding at the earliest opportunity.
“This particular scheme will run alongside the existing Countryside Stewardship Woodland Creation Grant but will be steered towards larger scale woodland creation with an emphasis on commercially productive species and public access.”
'Important environmental services'
CLA Forestry Adviser Mike Seville said there is an 'underlying presumption' that the primary purpose of rural land is to produce food.
“We want to be much more radical in our approach to developing a new food, farming and environmental policy to replace and better the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) because the public understand the benefits trees bring.
“Woodlands provide a wide range of important environmental services for society such as wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, soil protection, water quality and flood alleviation. A new policy should place greater emphasis on supporting woodland creation and management which gives land managers wishing to take a longer term view on their land use activities a much more profitable and competitive option than is currently available."
To be eligible to apply, the proposed schemes will need to be a minimum 30 hectares in size with each block of land being at least 10 hectares, however up to twenty per cent open space is permitted in the woodland design.
