Corporate report

Minutes: Forest Services board meeting 14 November 2023

Published 11 July 2024

Forest Services (FS) Board minutes of the 19th meeting held on Tuesday 14 November 2023, 13:30 – 16:00 via MS Teams.

Present

Sir William Worsley (Chair) 
Hilary Allison
Edward Barker 
Anna Brown 
John Lockhart 
Ross Murray 
Derrick Osgood 
Steph Rhodes 
Richard Stanford 
Sandy Storrie

Attendees

Alex Stewart – Forestry Commission Boardroom Apprentice

Apologies

Gemma Thomas

Minutes

Gemma Thomas (from recording)

1. Welcome and Apologies

Sir William Worsley welcomed attendees to the meeting.    

Sir William noted that the new Forestry Minister was Robbie Moore, and informed the Board that he and Richard Stanford would be meeting Minister Moore at 15:00 that day, so both would need to step out of the Board Meeting at that point. Hilary Allison had kindly agreed to chair the meeting in Sir William’s absence.  

Sir William gave the Board an update on recent activities across the Forestry Commission (FC). There had been a good joint conference with Natural England and the Environment Agency in July. Approximately 500 arms-length body members attended. Additionally, there was a joint Chairs/Chief Executives site visit coming up. There would be a further conference in January to build on working together and increasing engagement. Other recent meeting included one with the Chair of the Rural Payments Agency, and a good meeting with the Countryside Landowners Association (CLA), and the incoming President who seems very engaged with forestry. The National Forestry Conference was held jointly with the CLA and Grown in Britain on 11 October. It was a very positive occasion and many interesting discussions were had. 

Sir William updated the Board on Forestry England. A new programme ‘Securing the Future’ had been launched to respond challenging financial conditions and ensure Forestry England (FE) remains financially sustainable. The team at Westonbirt had raised about half the target monies to help regenerate the Silkwood area of the arboretum which was impacted by Ash Dieback. Six Wollemi Pines were planted at Bedgebury as part of the living collection at the National Pinetum. Wollemi Pines were thought to have been extinct for at least 70 million years until a chance discovery in 1994. The partnership with the His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service was developing well, welcoming people on probation. On 17 October the FE People Awards were held. 204 nominations were received, and the shortlisted finalists were welcomed to an event in Wendover Woods for a celebration of staff.   

At Forest Research the Holt Laboratory was being prepared for full ISO17025 accreditation in early 2024. The Northern Research Station infrastructure works were ending, and the refurbishment of staff areas at Alice Holt had been completed.   

Sir William noted that Sandy Storrie would be replacing Julia Grant as Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, in preparation for Julia’s term as Commissioner ending in 2024.   

Derrick Osgood noted that the FC Strategy was launched on 12 October.

2. Minutes of the last meeting and Declarations of Interest

The minutes of the Board meeting on 20 September 2023 were agreed as a true record. All actions were noted as discharged or in train.

There were no conflicts of interest.

3. Key Management and Financial Information

3.1 Directors’ Update

Anna Brown introduced the FS Director’s Report. She informed the Board that the announcement of the 15-year maintenance payments and 3-year capital window for the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) was hugely positive, and had been already been very well received. There had been a lot of discussion with the Future Farming team in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) regarding Environmental Land Management (ELM) payment rates. The development of grants had been happening in a siloed manner, which had been challenging. A proposal to increase EWCO payment rates to avoid woodland creation being ‘outcompeted’ was with Ministers. However the systemic problems caused by a lack of overall analysis of the effects of different policies remained. If the proposal was accepted payments would be backdated for all EWCO applicants to match the promise that early adopters will not be penalised, and the proposal contained a recommendation for an uplift to EWCO above scrub. The announcement was due in November, but there might be a delay. The next phase of the Grant Management System for applications and amendments was due to be launched. There had been some concern in the sector that all applications would be shut down, but that erroneous information had been corrected. Felling Licence Online was still experiencing some delays, but that should be rectified by early next year.   

Anna informed the Board about work being done in preparation for the next Spending Review, to look at what success for forestry would look like. The FS team was working with Defra colleagues, who had set up a series of workshops.   

The Board discussed productive forestry and the trends in percentages of planting figures, and, the need to reach the net zero target. The Board agreed on the need for greater clarity of messaging around the EWCO payment rates.   

Edward Barker updated the Board on the new secretary of state, and ensuring he was fully briefed on all forestry issues. He acknowledged the issues such as the Access Implementation Plan which had been waiting for a ministerial decision and hoped that these could go to a decision soon.

3.2 Risk, Issue and Opportunity Register, and FS Dashboard

Anna Brown updated the Board on the ongoing work to the FS Risk, Issue and Opportunity Register. She noted the work done to the FC Strategic Risk Register, and the alignment between the two registers. The positioning of risks was related to where the levers to affect them could be pulled. Some of the scoring and the risk trends still needed attention, but good work had been done to delineate between risks and issues.  Anna thanked Sandy Storrie for his help and advice.   

The Board discussed the potential of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) undertaking a review of forestry. Anna noted that from conversations with Richard Greenhous it would seem that any OEP review would come further down the line.  

The Board discussed customer satisfaction survey, and the small sample size which made the results not fully representative. The Board discussed presumption to plant, and the grant application process. Sandy Storrie raised the question of a health and safety risk, and also the need to reflect cybersecurity threats. He also noted that whilst the iterative work done to the Risk Register had been positive, there was a need to come to a point of stability in order to track progress over the next months. 

Sandy Storrie also reflected that executives were held to account against either the strategy or the business plan, and in thinking about the dashboard it was important not to have duplication and repetition in the data presented. Anna Brown noted that the streamlining of information was a good point and one she would need to reflect on, and also to discuss with Sam Malpass when she would present the Business Planning item later in the meeting.   

John Lockhart enquired about the large contract awarded to look at nature based solutions to accelerate woodland creation. Sam Malpass, who had joined the meeting, noted she had the data on that which she could pass to John.

3.3 Finance Update

Derrick Osgood updated the Board on AP6. There was a £760k overspend in terms of the forecast. The Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit was approximately £300k, after some changes made through the Nature for Climate Fund. The Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit was approximately £1m over, due to still waiting for Defra relief for pay. He highlighted the non-consolidated staff bonus. He noted there had been a review of budgeting over the past few months, as whilst close attention was being paid to the Business Plan, where FS was against budget was not being taken sufficiently into account. More transparency was therefore being created around the different funding streams in FS. He reflected that as this was worked through in the coming months, with he right decisions, FS would be in the right place with the controlled total.

4. Items for Discussion

4.1 Major Landowners and Tree Planting

The Board welcomed Lucy Wyatt to the meeting. Lucy noted that this was a refreshed plan for how FS intended to engage with major landowners which had been put together following the FC taking the lead on this engagement programme from Defra. It was about the top tier of the largest and most influential landowners and how FS could work with them and influence them to consider more woodland creation in the hope of bringing forward larger schemes. The engagement plan would enable a review and analysis of what interventions would work best. The need was clear to join up with other initiatives where there was crossover, for example with the planting on public land engagement with some of the institutional owners or working with delivery partners to avoid any duplication. The team had completed the initial information gathering, and the need for segmentation was clear. There was a mix of semi public bodies such as the Church of England, and the Ministry of Defence, and corporates such as water companies and private estates. Further mapping work would help clarify the size of the holdings. Personal relationships with agents and land managers were effective ways to reach landowners, and common barriers included the economics, uncertainty around ELM and land suitability and constraints, particularly in the north of England.   

The Board discussed the importance of social responsibility to major landowners. Sir William also highlighted the importance of the relationship with the CLA. The Board noted the importance of planting at scale to hit targets, and corporates might well be low-hanging fruit in this regard. The Board agreed that work to unblock any barriers to planting was vital. The Board asked Lucy about any work done to gather insights into what would incentivise people to plant at scale, and also the marketing opportunities provided by key public anniversaries and commemorations. Lucy noted upcoming meetings with the Defra monitoring and evaluation team around audience insight to get fresh evidence for what incentivises organisations to plant at scale.   

The Board requested a further update from Lucy at a meeting in 2024, either as a standalone item or woven into the Directors Report.

A return to Key Management and Financial Information

3.4 Q2 Report against the FS Business Plan 2023-2024

The Board welcomed Sam Malpass to the meeting. Sam drew the Board’s attention to the Red, Amber, Green ratings, and noted that overall the ratings looked broadly similar to the last time the Board had considered the information. Several of the red-rated items were not within the control of FS, and it was proving difficult to unblock them. In terms of next year’s Business Plan, work was ahead of where it had been previously. A dedicated team was in place, and it would come before the Board in March 2024 for approval. Sam noted Sandy Storrie’s earlier point about overlapping information and informed the Board that the head of Economics, Evidence and Analysis was working with the head of Business Transformation to see where papers could be streamlined. Sam noted that business planning was different this year because of the spending review coming up, so colleagues had been asked to look further ahead in order to be ready and be flexible. 

The Board asked Sam to flag the business-critical red actions. Sam agreed that the weighting of the red items needed further thought, and the business-critical red actions should appear on the Risk Register too.   

The Board also wanted to discuss how the Board could be engaged in some of the thinking around the presentation of the information. The Board noted that as they would be approving the plan in March and production would be later in the year, a discussion about their engagement could happen in March, however Board involvement in the details was not a good use of time, and big picture was much more useful.

A return to Items for Discussion

4.2 Plant Health

Hilary Allison took over chairing the meeting at this point, as Sir William and Richard Stanford left the meeting to talk to the Minister. The Board welcomed Andrea Deol to the meeting.   

Andrea noted her paper included background context in terms of priority areas of focus for Plant Health activities, and what she particularly wanted to draw out was an update on some of the significant developments that had happened this year, in particular a brief update on Oak Processionary Moth (OPM) and Ips typographus. She would also draw out some of the recent interceptions at the border, and what that meant in terms of pressures on the system particularly going into the next spending review.  

Regarding OPM earlier in 2023 a notable development was the finding of a breeding population in the area designed to be free from the pest. The majority of the country was designated to be free from the pest, and there was an established area around London and the south east with a buffer zone, and that has been very successful in controlling the spread. The finding was in Derbyshire, and that stimulated a lot of activity. The reporting system worked well. The tracing back led to the supplier nursery, which triggered an extensive exercise to trace other consignments of trees from that nursery.  41 planting sites were looked at as a result and no evidence of OPM was found.   

Andrea updated the Board on Ips typographus. 20 outbreak sites had been found this year. All of the sites had been found either through the aerial surveillance programme, on the ground or through the felling movement authorisation that is in place as a result of having a demarcated area which restricts movement and felling and processing of spruce material from within. Whilst outbreak site numbers have risen over the last few years, it should not be considered as a material change in the risk level but instead being due to the ability to detect and find these outbreak sites early. Andrea highlighted an interception in Scotland at Grangemouth port, and the work being done to understand more. Initial steps were to complete a full delimiting survey of the area to look for any other evidence of Ips typographus, particularly in the wider woodland. Analysis was also being done around the potential pathways for introduction.    

Andrea updated the Board on funding pressures as every outbreak requires considerable surveillance and resourcing implications, and noted that FS had managed to secure an uplift in budgets through Defra. 

The Board discussed restrictions around timber importation, and Andrea noted that there was the ability through the legislative framework on plant health to take rapid action if  a new or emerging risk was detected. That could be introducing emergency legislation, or it could be about strengthening the inspection regime. Decisions like that are taken as part of the UK Plant Health Service under the guidance of the Chief Plant Health Officer, Nicola Spence.   

The Board discussed contingency arrangements for the potential arrival of novel or aggressive pests, and Andrea confirmed that extensive contingency plans were in place.

4.3 FS Board Effectiveness Review

Hilary Allison invited the Board to give their reflections on the Board Effectiveness Review.  Derrick Osgood noted that getting some financial training for non-executives would be useful. He also reflected that the executive might need to work harder to explain what they were doing about key issues to the non-executives. Sandy Storrie reflected that the next Review should be an external validation, which I think can be done by a variety of agencies. He raised the point about the scheduling of meetings, and requested more rigour in the timings. Anna Brown noted that Sir William’s calendar was often a factor in scheduling meetings, but that if someone else could chair the meetings, there would be more freedom in the timetabling. Derrick commented that the cadence of FC meetings including the timing of the approval of the Annual Report and Accounts was being looked at. Ross Murray felt that the key concern for the Board was how FS’s customers view the Board’s effectiveness, and the Board needed to better understand what the key blockers to tree planting were, and why statutory targets were not being met.   

Hilary Allison noted that the Effectiveness Action Plan should add two points about the possibility of undertaking an external review to get a more objective perspective Board performance, and also to consider the timing and schedule the meetings. 

The Board discussed their level of challenge and rigorous engagement. Sandy Storrie reflected that could be because of the purely advisory function of the Board, as many of the executive functions were discharged by other, more senior boards on which Richard and William would sit. 

The Board asked for regular updates on the Effectiveness Action Plan across the year.

5. Any Other Business

Alex Stewart, the Forestry Commission’s Board Apprentice gave his reflections at the end of his year of apprenticeship. He noted it had been a learning opportunity for him, and it had been a fantastic opportunity. He noted the buddying system worked very well, but did comment that the time commitment with a full-time job was challenging. He thought a phased approach might help with the learning, and also more of an introduction to forestry. Overall, it had been a very rewarding experience.   

Sir William Worsley thanked Board members and closed the meeting.

6. Date of Next Meeting

The next scheduled Board meeting would be held on 1 March 2024, and will be online.