Corporate report

Minutes: 27 April 2023

Published 22 December 2023

Applies to England

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

Executive Board (EB) minutes of the 120th meeting via MS Teams and in Bristol Conference Room 27 April 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
Financial Accountant – Your Offer
Leadership Development Manager – Professional Manager Programme
Organisational Development Manager – Your offer
Head of Organisational Development – for items on programmes relating to staff

1. Welcome, updates and introductions

The Chair opened by thanking members for their teams’ engagement on the Forestry Commission (FC) Strategy and corporate plan. This has enabled expedient progress.

The Secretary of State has a clear direction to support decisions with evidence, and supportive of forestry.

The Institute of Chartered Foresters (ICF) conference was well attended this year. Two FC colleagues got an award. The sector has more confidence in ministerial engagement, including the likelihood of setting better informed forestry targets in the future.

The forestry minister in Scotland has broadened her portfolio. She has engaged well on forestry previously but due to the wider remit, forestry may no longer be a priority.

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 31 January 2023 were amended to update the attendance list and to correct a spelling mistake but were otherwise agreed as a true and accurate record.

Jo Ridgway confirmed that the Forestry Commission has a special status as both a government department and a statutory body so is not eligible to participate in the Civil Service People Survey to close off Action Point 5. The EB agreed that the cadence for the staff engagement survey should be maintained and so the next survey should take place in January 2024 to discharge action point 6.

All actions points were discharged.

3. GIAA Action Tracker

There are now 62 outstanding actions as a result of 10 additional GIAA reports, which added 45 new actions. Once reporting is complete, 16 actions should be resolved ahead of the Action Tracker going to the June ARAC.

A general theme of the recommendation is that as an organisation, the Forestry Commission relies on manual processes. This reliance is highlighted as a risk. The EB endorsed considering how to digitise processes and processing, though accepting that this is a challenge. This can only be achieved well with a tight specification of design to meet the needs.

Action 1: Both FE & FR corporate services teams to scope out digitisation opportunities of Forestry Commission processes to come back to the EB for endorsement.

Action 2: Derrick Osgood to upload GIAA audit reports as a repository for EB members to access.

4. Counter-fraud, bribery and corruption strategy

The EB approved the refreshed counter-fraud, bribery and corruption strategy recognising a lot of work has been done since 2020. There was some discussion about the Counter Fraud Action Plan, asking for proportionality and balance between actions needed to address risk.

5. FC Risk Register

The discussion was about the 12 May risk workshop. This will be an opportunity to fill in the gaps of the 5 risks identified in the December workshop. The newly articulated risk register will then go to the June ARAC for review.

Action 3: Derrick Osgood to share risk appetite statements across the organisation with EB members when available.

6. FC Strategy

The Chair noted thanks to EB members and their teams for engaging on this fast paced programme to produce the FC Strategy. The next steps on the strategy will be discussed at the Senior Executives Meeting the following week. The EB supported the Corporate Plan triangulating the business strategies. The aim is to articulate how the overarching draft FC strategy will be delivered through the plan and to identify gaps which require further work.

7. Senior executives meeting

The senior executive meeting will set out what is currently happening within internally, Defra and cross-govt and across the forestry sector, as well as expanding on the FC Strategy. The FC Strategy will have already been seen by most of those attending but this will be an opportunity to engage on what is missing or what is stopping the FC in delivering these goals. The EB agreed that getting buy-in will be critical in delivering the strategy so it is important to evidence where people fit in and how engagement can be sought.

There will also be opportunity for senior staff to meet some of the commissioners.

8. Health and safety update

Forestry England recorded one over 7 day RIDDOR reportable injury of a twisted ankle on site. Review of this incident is still in progress. All parts of the organisation have reported incidents over the last quarter.

One RIDDOR incident has been reported by a contractor. The lessons learned from this incident are critical and will be shared with the sector. One RIDDOR incident also reported for a volunteer.

Programmes to implement systems to track and manage hazardous materials and non-VME equipment are underway. Look Out & Look After programme is progressing, including embedding the vision across the business and improving welfare facilities.

Forest Services are working to improve induction of new staff overall and looking at a system to maintain records of reports where staff are exposed to hostile reactions when carrying out their enforcement activities.

The team are also reviewing root cause analysis process and a number of policies to ensure these are relevant and up to date.

9. Staff recognition

Staff recognition improves employee engagement, which leads to better business outcomes. The aim of this work is to formalise and regularise pockets of good practice already happening in the Forestry Commission. Staff recognition must be humble and sincere, it is not a substitute for a pay uplift and pay progression.

The EB wanted to consider creating a non-consolidated pot from the 0.5% in the pay offer this year to enable more pecuniary benefits for staff to recognise their efforts. This needs to be in addition to the staff benefits package. Jo Ridgway confirmed the FC is required to submit a business case for the 4.5% and 0.5% 2023/24 pay award announced recently across the Civil Service. Jo confirmed a non-consolidated pot is established through annual pay awards.

Action 4: Head of organisational development to progress a phased approach to implementing the recognition scheme beginning with informal and formal recognition. Derrick Osgood to bring back options using a non-consolidated pot for the Executive Board to consider on how to recognise staff.

10. Year 2Forestry Commission People Strategy

The EB noted the year 2 deliverables of the Forestry Commission People Strategy and progress against these. The committee agreed that whilst all year 3 deliverables were important for the FC, there was concerns that ‘the ask’ may be too much from the organisation to deliver at pace. The deliverables to be prioritised were agreed as: Your Offer, Recruitment and retention, and leadership development/talent. The EB asked that strategic workforce planning is brought to the next meeting.

Action 5: Head of organisational development to present a paper on strategic workforce planning at EB meeting on 26 June.

11. Talent Strategy Programme

This item was an introduction to the formulation of the Talent Strategy Programme. This aims to address an FC wide strategic approach to the attraction, development and retention of talent. The EB recognised that a talent strategy is a significant tool at a time when pay is a growing issue, and agreed that it is imperative to identify key talent gaps and take a prioritised approach to addressing organisational needs.

Action 6: Head of organisational development to refresh the Talent Strategy Mandate to reflect discussion and provide an out of committee paper, then to Develop a Talent Strategy Programme Definition Document with a refined list of objectives, narrower scope, pilot proposal for this year, and a timeline of the programme.

12. PMP Accreditation

The EB considered whether to support PMP accreditation. The EB endorsed the proposal, with the caveat of ensuring that the precedent set is proportionate.

13. Your Offer

The Forestry Commission Trade Unions (FCTU) have paused negotiation on Your Offer. The project group will continue to keep the FCTU informed of next steps, including a likely submission of the pay flexibility business case in mid-June.

This project group presented a number of reasons why the EB might choose to amend the current Your Offer proposal. The EB endorsed option e amendment, but slightly reduced to take account of the fact that only FS require 70% of operational hours to be backfilled. The EB requested the project team update the business case to reflect this increased figure and to find workforce efficiency savings.

1. AOB There was no other business and the meeting closed.

Note: papers accompanying agenda items 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 are official sensitive.