Corporate report

Minutes: 26 June 2023

Published 22 December 2023

Applies to England

• Publication for Northern Ireland
• Publication for Scotland
• Publication for Wales

Executive Board (EB) minutes of the 122nd meeting via MS Teams and in Bristol Conference Room 26 June 2023

Attendees:

Richard Stanford (Chair)
Anna Brown
Amanda Grist
Tristram Hilborn
Derrick Osgood
James Pendlebury
Steph Rhodes
Paula Rice
Jo Ridgway
Mike Seddon
Andrew Stirling (observer)
Julia Lovell – minute secretary
Head of Health and Safety and Training – Health and Safety updates
PA Consulting – FC Corporate plan, Strategy and KPIs
Defra Head of Group Comms – FC communications strategy
DD Defra Comms – FC communications strategy
Volunteer Manager – Safeguarding report
Diversity and Wellbeing Manager – Wellbeing dashboard
OD Development Manager – FC induction
Reward and Pensions Manager – AOB: non-consolidated pay award for agency staff

1. Welcome, updates and introductions

The Chair opened the meeting.

2. Minutes of the previous meeting and matters arising

The committee requested that that the minutes for the meeting of the Forestry Commission (FC) Executive Board (EB) of 27 April 2023. The following action is still outstanding.

Action 1: Derrick Osgood to share risk appetite statements across the organisation with EB members when available.

All other actions points were discharged.

3. Health and Safety update

The figures presented to the EB were produced 2 weeks prior to the meeting. Otherwise since the last update, there were three RIDDOR which were for Lyme Disease. This is where someone gets the bull’s eye rash or other symptoms and attends a doctor’s appointment, without needing further treatment. Forestry Commission is working with UKHSA and other organisations for research purposes to identify controls for Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases. There was also an over 7 day injury where someone hurt their ligaments while turning sharply walking through a carpark.

Since the report had been produced a further six minor injuries had been reported and 1 RIDDOR Dangerous Occurrence where a fork attachment on a front end loader failed. This is still being investigated and we will make sure lessons are learned and taken on board.

4. GIAA Action Tracker

There are 59 actions outstanding, some new actions are due to two new audits, tax and expenses. Since the April update 12 actions were completed.

There are 6 high priority actions still outstanding of which two are overdue but with new deadlines agreed. Forestry England confirmed that the audits leads are looking at these.

5. FC Corporate Plan, Strategy and KPIs

The final proposed Corporate Plan will be shared with the EB on this week ahead of the Commissioners’ board on 13-14 July. The EB confirmed that the FC Strategy is an external facing document, the purpose of the FC Corporate plan is to be an internally facing document for senior leaders that can be used to explain delivery priorities and actions to meet these for the year. Papers are redacted.

6. FC Communications Strategy

The purpose of this item was to endorse the FC 5-year communications strategy, provide direction on priorities for year 1 objectives, strategic areas and inception of a programme board to keep momentum.

The EB endorsed priorities being about having a positive external impact. Year 1 priorities were agreed to be: presence and engagement to explain and promote, initiating a framework for collecting evidence of impact, and a communicators’ network across FC to coordinate achievement of objectives and aid horizon scanning.

7. Safeguarding report

There has been improvement in processes and procedures in safeguarding since the last report. The review of the current Forestry Commission Policies and Guidance highlighting connections with Safeguarding Policy and legislation is progressing well. There has been good take up of enhanced DBS checks and level 2 safeguarding training across the organisation. Given the resource implications of this improvement, an additional post has been agreed to support managers in dealing with challenging circumstances within immediate workforce and members of the public.

8. Finance

The EB were presented with slides on core and non-core funding to provide a high level financial position for the FC. There were still some transfers outstanding, with new risks to delivery emerging such pay and timber prices.

What is not yet included is the pay uplift and additional £1,500 payment to staff. Cabinet Office have confirmed that FC is unlikely to get relief for non-government funded posts (ie. posts funded through a mixture of commercial and government income), so likely that the £1,500 uplift for majority of staff in Forestry England and Forest Research will have to be funded out of current budget. Risks across the organisations were also updated. Overall the most pertinent risk to managing within the in-year budget is workforce.

9. FC induction

The EB welcomed the work taken forward on a consistent and cohesive FC induction for new starters. The EB asked another stream of work to provide new starters with a comprehensive information sheet on basics such as booking annual leave or working remotely, similar to the New Starter Sway document FR use. The EB endorsed the recommendations of the proposed way forward. The Chair noted for the team to seek support from commissioners’ office if there is a funding shortfall for the animation.

Action 2: OD Development Manager to get in touch with FR HR manager to look at the Sway Induction summary sheet to reproduce for Forestry England, Forest Services and Commissioners’ Office.

10.Wellbeing dashboard

The Board were presented with the latest figures for wellbeing of staff. The EB would find it useful to have more nuanced numbers for sickness absence, for example those who have been off work consecutively for more than 3 days but fewer than 30 and if there are any trends to long term sickness. The EB also requested to see working days lost as a % of working days available and also in comparison to previous figures. Jo Ridgway explained that HR teams were currently unable to provide detailed suites of workforce management information but they were working to produce currently.

The EB welcomed the dashboard and look forward to finessing the figures to allow the FC to benchmark and compare the dashboard figures in the future.

Action 3: Jo Ridgway agreed to ask Heads of HR when such information can be presented to the Executive Board, in particular, to include consecutive absence between 3-30 days and if there are any long term sickness trends over the past year.

11. AOB

Non-consolidated pay award: Agency staff decision

Defra HR relayed that they had received legal advice to pay agency staff so long as they have been employed by FC for 12 weeks or more, and that FC did not need to seek its own legal advice. The Forestry Commission confirmed this position to staff.

Following this, the Cabinet Office advised that agency staff are not legally required to be included in the non-consolidated pay award. It is likely that most of the civil service organisations will not be paying agency staff the non-consolidated pay award. Given that the FC has already announced to staff that agency workers are included in this pay award, the EB endorsed to stick to the original announcement in this instance. Jo Ridgway confirmed that communications would be circulated to staff following written confirmation of the payment plan to the FC Trade Unions.

Confirmed report of OPM

There has been a confirmed report of an Oak Processionary Moth (OPM) infestation in Derbyshire, which is outside the control area. OPM manager will provide the EB with a briefing out of committee.

IT issues

The EB asked that lessons are learned from the recent IT issues, including how long it took someone to notice the issue, how national duty officers were contacted, how to reach staff who do not have FC phones, and prioritising who gets their laptop fixed in a transparent way.

SCS reporting

The Chair updated that he attended the moderation panel for the ERM group. There are now 4 grades:

• partially meeting
• partially achieving
• achieving
• exceeding

The Remuneration Committee will be apportioning bonus only for those graded as achieving high and exceeding.