Corporate report

Minutes: 17 April 2024

Published 24 September 2024

Applies to England

Executive Board (EB) minutes of the 125th meeting via MS Teams and in Bristol Conference Room 17 April 2024.

Attendees

Richard Stanford (Chair)
Tristram Hilborn
Derrick Osgood
James Pendlebury
Anna Brown
Steph Rhodes
Paula Rice
Mike Seddon
Becky Rhodes (observer)
Head of HR

Head of Health and Safety and Technical Training - Health and safety and mandatory training items
Julia Lovell - Minute secretary
HR Project Manager - Your Offer
Head of Organisational Development - FC People Strategy
Head of Performance - Corporate plan

1. Welcome, updates and introductions

The Chair opened the meeting. Amanda Grist and Jo Ridgway sent their apologies.

It is a sensitive period until local elections on 2 May 2024. Political election later in the year, may result in strategic changes, will be worth reviewing manifesto commitments.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are implementing a recruitment freeze but decisions will be based on impact.

Defra have been subject to a malware breach, which has been contained. Since the meeting Defra IT sent Forestry England IT the information on the security risk, our systems automatically identified this risk some time ago and so we would have been unaffected or would have been alerted if we were subject to a malware breach.

The gender pay gap report has been published. The EB briefly discussed whether the Forestry Commission (FC) also needs to include a race pay gap, however this is a challenge due to lower uptake of providing data on race. Unless this can be mandated, the numbers are small and not statistically significant enough to publish a report.

2. Minutes of the Executive Board 23 January 2024 and matters arising

The minutes for the meeting of the FC Executive Board of 23 January 2024 were agreed as a true and accurate record.

The following actions were left as outstanding.

Action 1: Richard Stanford and Jo Ridgway to consider findings of this session to plan an away day to empower the FC Executive Board to deliver the corporate plan together.

Action 2: Jo Ridgway to write up findings and send to EB members.

Action 3: Head of Health and Safety and Technical Training to feedback to on suitability of NEBOSH training course tailored to senior leaders following trial (after May 2024).

All other action points were discharged.

3. FC People Strategy

Head of Organisational Development provided the status of deliverables of the year 3 FC People Strategy. Last year the FC People Strategy went through its mid-point. It has also been audited to provide assurance of its trajectory. One of the recommendations was to consider provision of data for tracking performance, including making use of the staff engagement survey for quantitative and thematic analysis.

The EB briefly discussed the priorities for year 4 and were broadly in agreement that they are right. The EB asked for a re-baseline of resource to align with implementing the Corporate Plan since Your Offer has timed out. The EB agreed to review year 4 deliverables in light of the discussion about Your Offer and Corporate Plan.

There was also a brief discussion on how Forestry Commission can make recruitment more agile. Forest Research have a better system and have shared lessons with Forestry England HR team. The front engine has so far doubled the traffic which demonstrates that better branding makes a difference to applicants.

Action 4: Review Year 4 FC People Strategy Deliverables following the discussion on Corporate Plan.

Action 5: Re-baseline FC People Strategy following agreement on next steps after Your Offer.

4. Your Offer - way forward

The business case timed out for a decision in order to implement it for staff in 2023-24. The EB considered the next steps – whether to submit another business case or instead to use the annual pay remit and other options to the EB to address the unfair pay structure.

The EB explored ways of addressing pay structure within the annual pay remit. The EB agreed that to operate within existing remit without submitting a business case would require issues to be prioritised, with short, medium and long term actions.

[ITEM REDACTED]

Action 6: Head of HR to provide a scoping paper to EB via correspondence to outline potential future options that could be met through the annual pay remit.

Action 7: James Pendlebury to feed in Forest Research priorities for the scoping paper.

5. Corporate plan update

The FC Strategy was published last year, the Corporate Plan has been internally published. Head of Performance provided an update on the Corporate Plan workstreams for 2024-28.

The EB endorsed clarifying and focusing on three Strategic Opportunities that will enable and support the forestry sector through the FC. The opportunities were:

1. Green finance (including natural capital funding schemes).
2. Ecosystem collapse (including biodiversity and resilient timber provision).
3. Land use framework.

The EB also considered how the ‘Enabling’ work can support the aspiration for ‘better together.’

Enablers:

Governance

EB were largely content with the approach. It should be led by the Commissioners’ Office.

Systems

This should be looked at first as the Functions will be dependent on this. Continue with delivery of ERP.

Require clear Terms of Reference for EB before the next EB and for other systems in due course.

Functions

The appropriate order of priority should be HR, IT, Finance, but the EB would like the opportunity to provide further direction prior to commencing.

Action 8: Head of Performance to separate out the three priority Strategic Opportunities from the reminder.

Action 9: Draft Terms of Reference for group to look at for enablers, and sign off plan for this work.

6. Budget

The update on budget has not changed since the Commissioners’ board which was held on 15 April 2024. The Forestry Commission is on budget, with some fluctuations on grants. General ledger closed on Saturday, focus of work is now to cross reference all claims. First draft of the Annual Report and Accounts will be circulated to members for comment on Monday.

Sub-delegation letters are ready to go and will be circulated soon. The focus now will be which risks to illustrate to Defra and which position to share at Q1.

There was also still no confirmation of the terms of the Spending Review. An update will be shared as soon as this becomes available.

The next session of the EB will pick up on the health of our financial systems.

Action 10: Derrick to provide update on the health of financial systems paper.

7. FC Strategic Risk Register

Pay risk has been updated after Your Offer run out of time for a decision to enable delivery. This will need to be escalated to Defra. A new spending review risk has also been recorded, and EB agreed to escalate this to an issue as without clarity we cannot start business planning. Industrial action risk has also been recorded as PCS have balloted their staff. There is also a new Geospatial Information System Risk though the EB agreed this should be delegated to Forest Services board to review. The EB also noted the overall low staff morale and that communications will need to action this as soon as feasible. The loss of staff in the Knowledge Information Management team has also been recorded as a risk for the organisation.

Action 11: Derrick Osgood to update the FC Strategic Risk Register, circulate to members and then share with Defra.

8. GIAA Action Tracker

29 audits have taken place and so there are many actions to complete. The focus should be on clearing older actions. The EB are invited to support the business to close these down. The ask is to agree on amenable timelines for the new audits this year.

9. Health and safety update

The final quarter of last year we had mostly minor injuries. One RIDDOR incident where a Forestry England member of staff fell in muddy conditions. Across all the organisations, the rain over the past period has caused more slips and falls.

Most volunteers/contractors were minor injuries. One contractor injury needed a visit to the Accident & Emergency but does not appear to be a reportable injury.

A relatively static trend between the past year and the year before. This is because reporting is getting better, but we are also learning lessons from this reporting so the numbers are overall steady. The EB noted the general trends of injuries between the businesses and what we are doing to address these.

Head of Health and Safety and Technical Training also provided an update on the work programmes.

The ambition is to provide the EB with an accident frequency rate to compare the Forestry Commission to other organisations or sectors to benchmark.

10. AOB

FC-Defra framework agreement

We are likely to get the framework agreement imminently, it will be shared with members as soon as possible.

Security Risk Management Forum meeting summary

The Forestry Commission has several forums of subject matter experts, the SRMF is one of those and needs to feed into the EB. The EB agreed that papers to EB should be sponsored by a member of the EB.

Conflict of interest policy update

On Monday there will be a news story on code of conduct, with an update on how we record declarations of interest for staff.

Tax audit

Forestry Commission are once again being asked to participate in a review process with HMRC. Head of HR will update after meeting with colleagues.