Woodland planning reform

I’ve written about the practicalities of woodland planning over the years and created an extensive guide to the legal situation on the Century Wood website. But here I’m going to present a “shopping list” of what changes I’d like to see.

There is a lot of emphasis on woodland creation at the moment. The benefits of woodland that are promoted include “boosting wildlife, providing shelter for livestock, preventing soil erosion, reducing flooding, providing timber, supporting the economy, and improving mental health and wellbeing.” Those benefits rely on appropriate management, including human interventions which replace the actions of species we removed in the past.

In England the target is to go from about 10% tree cover to 16.5% by 2050. But that means that two thirds of that tree cover for 2050 already exists, today. So as well as planting, we can start work on having 16.5% of appropriately managed woodland today, by bringing more of the 10% into management. One aspect is removing barriers to bringing woodland into management, and that brings us to planning law.

Before the creation of the planning system in 1948, work needed for the creation and management of woodlands could just be done when needed. If you needed a hut for forestry workers or a roadway to get timber and equipment in or out, you just did it. The 1948 Town and Country Planning Act took away that ancient right, but then partially gave it back in the 1948 General Development Order which allowed roads and 300 sq.ft wooden/metal huts without needing permission from a council. Over the years, even these exceptions have been chipped away and it’s currently necessary to give the council or other local planning authority a chance to veto the siting and appearance of forestry buildings and roadways, and they can also just say they believe the work is unnecessary and not allowed. Different local authorities have very different policies about what are reasonably necessary “permitted developments”, and many do not accept that multi-hectare woods even need one of those small sheds you see on each tiny plot on council allotment sites. So it’s a postcode lottery: you buy a woodland, start investing in the management of it, and then discover that you have an unsympathetic council the hard way when you make an application.

So the first changes would be (1) more consistent application of permitted development rights between different local planning authorities, including a definition of forestry that includes small woodlands, and (2) an acknowledgement that small sheds etc are even more necessary for multi-hectare woods than they are for tiny council allotments.

Next we have a recent backward step which is specific to England. In 2023, the government removed the so called Four Year Rule concerning operations, including buildings and roadways. This meant that after four years, councils could not take enforcement action against these developments even if the council subsequently decided they needed planning permission. This has been replaced by a new Ten Year Rule, and prolongs the uncertainty surrounding work done which a woodland owner believed would not need permission. It seems unlikely that Whitehall would stomach a U-turn so quickly but anyway my third change is (3) reinstate the Four Year Rule for operations for the purpose of forestry.

There’s a saying that the woods that stay are the woods that pay. Nowadays there are environmental restrictions that effectively prevent the removal of most woodlands, but unless a woodland generates income or is owned by someone who can subsidise it, it will be left unmanaged, with less biodiversity and tending towards dark monocultures in some cases.

The principal way that a woodland can pay its way is by producing wood and timber products, and again the planning system can get in the way. Most of the value to people of these products is added by processing and much of this could be done in woodlands themselves. However, doing anything beyond getting the wood into manageable sizes for storage or transportation off site may require planning permission. For example, planing or cutting planks to specific dimensions. Certainly activities like turning wood and making chairs, using coppice products to make hurdles and hazel fence panels, and perhaps even charcoal making. To me these restrictions seem incompatible with our goal to bring more woodland into management, while reducing emissions from transport. It leads to my next proposed change (4) make small scale production of finished products, in the same woodland as the wood was grown, unambiguously permitted development.

Making more direct use of products from woodland also helps connect urban people with British nature, in a way that bamboo wood products brought in a shipping container from the other side of the world can never do. It would promote the idea of wood culture, and that those coppice products in your home are connected to those patches of coppice woodland you see when you visit woodlands.

But there are even more direct ways of helping people connect with woodlands, especially as children and as people of all ages wishing to learn woodland management skills. So my final change would be (5) Forest School and outdoor learning and training to be permitted development in woodlands, and rely on designations (SSSI, a new protected Ancient Woodland designation etc) and the Ofsted safeguarding framework rather than the planning system to regulate them.

So in summary my planning reform shopping list goes like this:

  1. More consistent application of permitted development rights between different local planning authorities, including a definition of forestry that includes small woodlands.
  2. An acknowledgement that small sheds etc are even more necessary for multi-hectare woods than they are for tiny council allotments.
  3. Reinstate the Four Year Rule for operations for the purpose of forestry.
  4. Make small scale production of finished products, in the same woodland as the wood was grown, unambiguously permitted development.
  5. Forest School, outdoor learning and training to be permitted development in woodlands, and rely on designations (SSSI, a new protected Ancient Woodland designation etc) and the Ofsted safeguarding framework rather than the planning system to regulate them.

Well, we can dream 🙂

Wet woodland

This has been a week of flooding in Shropshire and much of the rest of the country. At Century Wood, the water levels have been higher as they usually are in winter, and our seasonal ponds where the water table breaks through the surface, are back.

Here are two contrasting photos of one of the boundary ditches: on the left, to show the depth of the ditch, here it is empty during the drought year of 2011 when I believe water was diverted for irrigation; and almost overflowing this week. That fallen log is the standing tree with the fork in the 2011 photo.

There is normally a foot or two of water in that ditch all year round. This next photo is of another drainage ditch which is normally dry but fills up and then starts flowing when there are floods. A bit back from the ditch is a dead tree with orange fruiting bodies from the fungi consuming the rotting timber inside. The fungus is something like Velvet Shank.

Finally here is one of the seasonal ponds we have, looking like a true pond until you look closely and see the green air-breathing plants temporarily submerged under the water. Some of the smaller trees have died or had their roots rotted and become unstable. But there are large plantation poplars round the edge who seem happy enough.

Stopping by Woods, in France

I went for a walk on a snowy afternoon earlier this month in woods on the French/Swiss border. Naturally I took lots of photos and I’ve set them to a recording from 1952 of Robert Frost reciting his famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”.

Here are the stills used in the video, with some extras:

Birds at the wood

I’ve never been a bird watcher, but one of the aspects of opened-ended activities like owning a wood is that you’re drawn outside your comfort zone. Early on I wanted to know what the “big birds” were (common buzzards) and I spent time trying to creep up on the woodpeckers I could hear drumming on tree trunks (great spotted woodpecker). As well as small songbirds, I’ve since seen or heard pheasants, pigeons, rooks, tawny owls, mallard ducks, and most recently a heron a couple of times by the South Ditch.

Common buzzard on a trail camera

I also believe I have heard woodcocks, and I am particularly keen to pin this down. They are a priority species and as Century Wood has wet woodland areas, it should provide an ideal habitat for them. When I bought the wood, the agent specifically said to look out for them as he’d seen them.

Last year, we went to the Timber Festival and there was a session by the University of Cumbria about monitoring wildlife with equipment like trail cameras. I was familiar with most of it since I’ve been using trail cameras at the wood for several years, but I learned how wary foxes are of cameras which I explains why I’ve only managed to get photos of them walking away from the camera – presumably passing from behind the trunk it was attached to.

Fox on a trail camera

However, completely new to me were the AudioMoth sound recorders. These are developed by Open Acoustic Devices, which began as a research project at the University of Southampton. They’re the audio equivalent of a trail camera, and can be configured using a computer and then left on site for weeks or months. One particularly attractive possibility is identifying bat species from their ultrasonic echo location sounds that we cannot hear: we do have bats at the wood and it would be great to know more about them. The whole AudioMoth ecosystem seems solid and high quality, and they are used by research projects so they have to work reliably.

To get started, I’m experimenting with one in the garden at home during the Christmas holidays and then I’ll take it to the wood and see what I get.

Holiday at Century Wood

We’ve had the Log Cabin at the wood for 12 years now and as well as being genuinely useful for forestry, it doubles up as a getaway we can use any time and without any notice. With all the travel disruption at home and abroad this summer we decided to have a couple of weekend breaks away, and spend a Monday to Friday week at the wood when the weather hadn’t gone haywire.

The setup is very similar to these pictures from solo stays when I’m doing forestry work. Camp beds, gas stove for cooking, and electric 12V lights or gas lanterns. You can see more in this video I did.

During the days we did touristy things, including the Ironbridge museums, Lilleshall Abbey and Lilleshall Hall National Sports Centre, Hoo Farm which now has an impressive woodland dinosaur park, and Wightwick Manor near Wolverhampton.

At the wood, we also did important work on dens, and spotting buzzards and hares.

On the last day we looked at stretches of the old Shrewsbury and Newport Canal which is being restored here and there, including work starting at the Berwick Tunnel just east of Shrewsbury and impressive progress at Wappenshall Junction where the basin should be ready to refilled with water later this year. There’s currently a narrow boat on the short stretch of canal that survived in Newport too, which all helps build awareness of the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal Trust‘s work. The canal was part of the picture of water management in the Weald Moors on which the wood sits, and I’m becoming more interested in how it all developed as the history of the draining of the land is also the history of the wood.

On the way home we stopped for ice creams at Norbury Junction. This is where the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal met the larger Shropshire Union Canal, which is now a busy route for leisure canal boats. All that’s left there of the small canal is a short stretch used as a boat yard, but one day it may be linked up again and allow boats to travel all the way to Shrewsbury.

Mid summer week

It’s now high summer in Century Wood and the place is full of life. I was here at the weekend, for the sun and the heat and the welcome downpours of rain. Today is Monday 20th of June 2022 and tonight will be the shortest night of the year. The Summer Solstice is tomorrow. At 10:14am BST the Sun will reach the end of its annual journey north, stop, and begin again to move southwards against the pattern of fixed stars and constellations in the sky. This makes tomorrow the longest day of the year.

Later in the week, the traditional Midsummer Day is on Friday 24th of June, which is also the saint’s day of St John the Baptist. Along with Christmas Day, the 25th of March and 29th of September, Midsummer Day was one of the Quarter Days which divided the year and on which rents were traditionally due. It was a day for many of our lost traditions of bonfires, maypoles, and fairs.

Mid summer features in one of my favourite Kipling poems, “Tree Song”, set to music by Peter Bellamy in the 1970s as “Oak and Ash and Thorn”. Of the trees the poem lists, Century Wood is only missing Yew and Beech.

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
    Old England to adorn, 
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
    Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn. 
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,    
    All of a Midsummer morn! 
Surely we sing no little thing,
    In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

A walk to Walden Pond

In this video from May 2022, I walk from the busy crossroads into Walden Woods and to the site of Thoreau’s cabin, where he lived for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days from July 1845. I add a stone brought from Century Wood to the cairn by the cabin site. I then look at the wildlife and views of the pond and the forest.

Felling winter firewood

In this video I cut down hazel, wych elm and ash trees for firewood, as I clear the edge of a woodland ride at Century Wood to let in more light and provide more varied habitats. I use the wood tractor, trolley, and chainsaw, and bring the logs back to the drying barn to season.

Snow walk through Dunham Massey

After the snow fall at the end of November 2021 I walked around the National Trust’s Dunham Massey estate in Cheshire, mostly in the oak woodland of the deer park. I made this video using a new iPhone Pro 13. We see fallen and decaying trees, fallow deer, the old brick slaughterhouse tower, ducks in the moat in front of the House.

Forests of Dune

The release of Denis Villeneuve’s wonderful film of the first half of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” has coincided with the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, but few reviewers have made the connection because the book’s ecological themes are largely absent from the screen version.

Continue reading “Forests of Dune”