Written evidence submitted by the Woodland
Trust (LOCO 52)
The Woodland Trust welcomes the opportunity to respond
to this consultation. The Trust is the UK's leading woodland conservation
charity. We have three aims: to enable the creation of more native
woods and places rich in trees; to protect native woods, trees
and their wildlife for the future; to inspire everyone to enjoy
and value woods and trees. We own over 1,000 sites and have 300,000
members and supporters.
SUMMARY
¾ Devolving
power to local communities has the potential to release a significant
amount of voluntary effort and enthusiasm for improvement of their
local environment including creation of new habitat and the Government's
National Tree Planting Campaign could be an important mechanism
for facilitating this.
¾ In the
context of localism, it is important that mechanisms exist for
co-operation and planning across local authority boundaries. This
is particularly important where protection and enhancement of
the natural environment is concerned in order to ensure development
of functional ecological networks through a landscape scale approach.
¾ It is
important that Government puts in place appropriate mechanisms
or incentives for local authorities to ensure that important and
often irreplaceable habitats continue to enjoy strong protection
in an era of radically decentralised decision making.
¾ Recognising
the importance of a healthy natural environment as a contributor
to a strong sustainable economy, it is important that the new
Local Enterprise Partnerships are given environmental objectives
and have representatives from the environmental sector involved
in their decision making processes.
The extent to which decentralisation leads to
more effective public service delivery; and what the limits are,
or should be, of localism
1. The coalition agreement contains several key
commitments in relation to localism in relation to service delivery,
including: "We will promote the radical devolution of
power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community
groups...." (1)
2. The Woodland Trust believes that the natural
environment, and in particular woodland, has the capacity to deliver
a wide range of ecosystem services to local communities. In the
case of woodland these benefits include reduction of urban temperatures,
improvement of water quality, alleviation of certain types of
flooding, provision of habitats for wildlife, aiding productive
agriculture, mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate
change and the enhancement of health and well being etc.
3. In devolving decision making not just down
to principal local authorities but also down further to local
communities, the Woodland Trust is concerned that emphasis on
localism does not lose the wider policy and delivery perspective
available at a sub national level. For instance we believe that
creating new native woods and planting trees is not a luxury.
Instead tree planting is an essential action in developing green
infrastructure that can deliver the wide range of benefits referred
to in the previous paragraph. This is supported by Government
policy—the National Tree Planting Campaign and the Low Carbon
Transition Plan (2).
4. Delivery of this much needed woodland creation
is increasingly planned at a landscape scale that often transcends
local district or neighbourhood boundaries, following instead
boundaries set by the natural landscape, geology and river corridors.
5. The current "Strategy for England's Trees
Woods and Forests" states (page 24) (3):
"Many of the ecosystem services we seek from
trees, woods and forests in the future will require us to look
outwards from individual woodland sites and think about the impact
they will have on surrounding land uses and resources (and the
effect of these on the woodland too). This is called, for want
of a better term, the 'landscape-scale' approach...."
6. The recently published Lawton Review (Making
Space for Nature: A Review of England's Wildlife Sites) states
that:
"Local authorities should ensure that ecological
networks, including areas for restoration, are identified and
protected through local planning. Government should support local
authorities in this role by clarifying that their biodiversity
duty includes planning coherent and resilient ecological networks."
(4)
7. It is therefore important that woodland creation
policy and delivery continues to be planned at a landscape scale,
and it will be necessary for Government to consider how this can
be done in the context of the radically decentralised service
delivery which is implied in the localism agenda.
The lessons for decentralisation from Total Place,
and the potential to build on the work done under that initiative,
particularly through place-based budgeting
8. The "Total Place" concept and place
based budgeting can make an effective contribution to the localism
agenda by giving local people the power to decide how increasingly
scarce public funds should be spent in their area.
9. The coalition agreement says that ..... ".....we
will give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape
of the place in which their inhabitants live, based on the principles
set out in the Conservative party publication Open Source Planning."
10. Recent statements from ministers make it
clear that the Government intends that the planning system in
future will develop upwards from the parish or neighbourhood level
and that every citizen will be given an opportunity to contribute
to this process.
11. There is evidence that, when they are given
a say in local decision making, local people in many areas support
measures to improve their local environment and tree planting
and woodland creation are seen as important mechanisms of achieving
this.
12. Research carried out by the Woodland Trust
and outlined in our report "Space for People" (5) shows
that people value having trees and woodland close where they live,
because of the wide range of benefits which these habitats provide
for local communities. The Woodland Trust has developed a Woodland
Access Standard which potentially provides people with a tool
for measuring how much access they have to woodland in their community
and where new woodland creation is most needed.
13. The Woodland Trust has a considerable amount
of experience of working with local communities on small and medium
scale woodland creation projects.
14. From 1996 to 2001, the Woodland Trust worked
with local communities across England, Wales and Northern Ireland
to create 250 small woods close to local communities to celebrate
the new Millennium. Local people were involved in all aspects
of the project: from fundraising, through planning the design
of the wood, the actual planting of trees and ongoing aftercare
of the site. More recently between 2004 and 2010, the Woodland
Trust planted over eight million trees as part of our Tree for
All project and involved over two million children in various
aspects of the work. The Woodland Trust's current "More Trees
More Good Campaign" is developing these initiatives further
and introducing new ones such as "My View", an online
tool for members of the public to visualise how their street or
locality would look with more trees and lobby their local elected
representatives. (6)
15. The Woodland Trust is very keen to support
Defra and other departments and agencies of Government in delivery
of the National Tree Planting Campaign, which is a key commitment
of the new Government in its coalition agreement and has the potential
to be an effective tool in regeneration of neighbourhoods, particularly
in urban areas. We believe that this campaign has key linkages
with the Big Society agenda in that it could be a means of mobilising
local people and civil society groups across the country to take
action to improve their local communities. The act of tree planting
is seen by many people, including children, as an inspirational
event and one which shows commitment to the future of their local
community.
The role of local government in a decentralised
model of local public service delivery, and the extent to which
localism can and should extend to other local agents
16. Two commitments in relation to local government
in the coalition agreement are:
"We will give local authorities a general
power of competence."
"We will......give communities the right
to take over local state run services."
17. The Government has yet to set out in detail
how the general power of competence will be delivered in practice
but ministers have already begun to reduce significantly the number
of targets and guidance documents which central government issues
to local authorities.
18. From a local authority perspective, tree
planting and woodland creation have the potential to deliver on
a vast range of diverse agendas, such as social inclusion, economic
regeneration, enhancement of health and well being, tackling climate
change, water management and reversing loss of biodiversity.
19. There are many positive examples across the
country of local authorities working with local communities and
civil society groups on projects to improve the local environment
and many of them involve woodland creation and tree planting.
For example the Lawton Review quotes as a case study Stoke-on-Trent
Council working with the Woodland Trust to reconnect people to
nature by enhancing urban ecological networks. One immediate outcome
is that the city council is planting 6,000 trees on mown public
open space with the Woodland Trust in the next three years.
20. The Woodland Trust has also worked with Essex
County Council to facilitate creation of new woodland on private
land all over the county under our More Woods (7) project, for
the improvement of the local environment.
21. There should be potential, in furtherance
of the localism agenda, for delegation to town, parish and neighbourhood
councils of some of the responsibilities currently exercised at
principal council level in respect of management of the natural
environment, including trees and woodland. Many parish councils
already manage small local parks, playing fields and open spaces
and there is potential under localism for them to play a greater
role in managing existing environmental assets and in creating
new ones.
22. The wording of the extract from the Coalition
Agreement quoted above (para 16), seems to infer that not only
will local councils be encouraged to take over and run local environmental
assets but even right down to the estate or street level, people
could be encouraged to take on management or possibly even ownership
of these assets.
23. There is already evidence that some local
authorities are responding to the need to the challenging financial
times by seeking to raise capital by selling areas of public open
space. Transfer to some form of community management or ownership
may be a better option and allow the local authority to set criteria
for continued use of the areas as open space for the benefit of
local people and for ongoing management and maintenance of the
sites to an agreed standard.
24. We have concerns about how areas of particular
conservation importance and in particularly irreplaceable habitats
such as ancient woodland can continue to be protected in a much
more decentralised system.
25. The Lawton Review speaks of the need for
such protection to be built into new governance structures:
"Planning policy and practice should:
continue to provide the strongest protection to
internationally important sites and strong protection from inappropriate
development to SSSIs; and
provide greater protection to other priority habitats
and features that form part of ecological networks, particularly
Local Wildlife Sites, ancient woodland and other priority BAP
habitats."
26. Currently ancient woodland is given some
protection in planning policy in the form of PPS9 but around 85%
of ancient woodland does not enjoy the protection of a statutory
designation such as SSSI.
27. The future of Government planning policy
or guidance is yet to be decided and it has been suggested that
it may take the form of a looser less prescriptive framework.
At the same time, the often strong planning policy on biodiversity
and nature conservation in regional policy is no longer operating,
following revocation of the Regional Spatial Strategies. We are
concerned that loss of strong regional policy on protection of
ancient woodland, for example, could lead to even more of this
irreplaceable habitat being lost.
28. The Government has announced in its Coalition
Agreement that it intends to create a new designation giving equivalent
protection to that of SSSIs for "green spaces of importance
to local people". We very much welcome this commitment and
would like to see all areas of ancient woodland given this protection.
However, there is no guarantee that all communities will see all
important habitats such as ancient woodland as being of importance
to them.
29. Therefore we believe it is important that
the Government encourages or incentivises local authorities to
ensure that ancient woodland and other important habitats in their
areas are given strong protection, either through strong planning
policy or guidance or other mechanisms.
30. Another key aspect of the Government's Localism
agenda is the setting up of Local Enterprise Partnerships to help
local authorities and local businesses to work together across
local government boundaries to stimulate economic growth and prosperity
in their localities. We believe that, if LEPs are to be a key
delivery tool for localism, it is important that they have at
least some environmental objectives and representation on their
boards.
31. If the LEPS are destined to enact decisions
that affect social and environmental aspirations , then we believe
they should incorporate expertise from these sectors. Without
this type of inclusive partnership there is a risk of marginalising
the environmental agenda at a time when there is widespread recognition
that the environment and prosperity are not in competition but
intertwined and the Coalition government rightly aspires to be
the "greenest government ever". In the foreword to the
consultation on the Natural Environment White Paper (8), the Defra
Secretary Caroline Spelman, rightly points out that "our
natural environment has a broader national value. It underpins
our economic prosperity, our food security, our health, our ability
to adapt to a changing climate and to reduce the greenhouse gases
which cause this change". A healthy natural environment is
crucial to our continued economic prosperity and should not be
considered an optional luxury. It should therefore be a key element
of the LEP's remit.
32. The bid for the Leeds City Region LEP (9)
contains a section on the objectives of the city region's green
infrastructure strategy and we believe this is a linkage which
should be seen as good practice, recognising as it does the importance
which greenspace and the natural environment can play in ensuring
a healthy sustainable economy.
33. We do not believe it would be appropriate
for LEPs to be given formal planning powers, as they are not as
democratically accountable as local authorities and hence such
a move could risk undermining one of the key tenets of localism,
which is to bring decision making on planning closer to the people
who are affected by such decisions.
The action which will be necessary on the part
of Whitehall departments to achieve effective decentralised public
service delivery
What, if any, arrangements for the oversight of
local authority performance will be necessary to ensure effective
local public service delivery
34. We have referred earlier to the need for
Whitehall Departments and in particular Defra to ensure that Government
planning policy or guidance gives adequate protection to irreplaceable
habitats within the context of a radical decentralisation of power
within the Localism agenda.
35. In recent years many public bodies at the
regional and sub-regional level (for example RDA's, leaders boards,
government offices etc) have developed extensive libraries of
evidence on environmental and other key issues and it is important
that this work is not lost as a resource for future policy development.
The key challenges here are to find a way of effective long term
storage of this data and also how to make it accessible to local
authorities and others in a usable form. This may require some
investment initially to adapt and disaggregate the data so that
is of relevance for use by sub-regional and local bodies.
The impact of decentralisation on the achievement
of savings in the cost of local public services and the effective
targeting of cuts to those services
36. We have mentioned previously the wide range
of ecosystem services which the natural environment and trees/woodland
in particular can provide for local communities. Often employing
the natural environment to provide a service can be cheaper than
alternatives involving mechanical systems or hard engineering.
37. Flood alleviation is a particularly good
example of this and there are many good examples around the country
of where sustainable drainage systems involving greenspace have
proved much more effective and often cheaper than alternative
systems. Local authorities have responsibilities under the Flood
and Water Management Act (2010) for preparing plans to prevent
and alleviate flooding and tree planting/woodland creation can
potentially play a role in this.
38. Localism gives local authorities an opportunity
to find solutions which best suit their needs and which are cost
effective but there is a challenge in that the most effective
measures will often involve co-operation between local authorities
and other public bodies (for example water companies) over quite
large areas.
39. The Woodland Trust has recently published
a report ("Woodland Actions for Biodiversity and Their Role
in Water Management") on how trees planting and woodland
creation can be cost effectively used to bring about both alleviation
of certain types of flooding and significant improvements in water
quality. (10).
40. Within local authorities, decentralisation
of landscape management to parish councils and/or community groups
may produce cost savings. Sometimes groups of local people may
be willing to manage an area of greenspace n a voluntary basis
and they will also have an opportunity to experiment with more
varied less intensive management regimes. There is evidence, for
example in the National Urban Forestry Unit's report "Trees
or Turf: Best Value in local authority landscape management"
(11) that moving from intensively mown grass management to less
intensive regimes usually results in no increase in costs and
can actually deliver cost savings.
October 2010
REFERENCES
(1) HM Government, The Coalition—Our Programme
for Government (May 2010).
(2) HM Government, The UK Low Carbon Transition
Plan—National strategy for climate change and energy (2009).
(3) Defra, A Strategy for England's Trees, Woods
and Forests (2007).
(4) Defra, Making Space for Nature: A review
of England's Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network (2010).
(5) The Woodland Trust, Space for People report
(2010)
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/about-us/publications/Documents/space-for-people-new.pdf
(6) The Woodland Trust, "My View" campaign
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/campaigning/my-view/Pages/myview.aspx
(7) The Woodland Trust, "More Woods"
product
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/plant-trees/plant-a-wood/Pages/morewoods.aspx
(8) Defra, An invitation to shape the nature
of England (2010).
(9) Leeds City Region, LEP outline proposal (2010)
http://www.leedscityregion.gov.uk/uploadedFiles/About_Us/LCR--White%20Paper--v12%20Introduction%20and%20Summary.pdf
(10) Woodland Trust, Woodland actions for biodiversity
and their role in water management (2008)
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/pdf/woodswater26_03-08.pdf
(11) National Urban Forestry Unit, Trees or Turf,
best value in managing urban greenspace (1998)
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