15 minutes with...Baroness Young, chair of the Forestry Commission

In this episode, we sit down with Baroness (Barbara) Young, the newly appointed Chair of the Forestry Commission, for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of trees and woodland in England.

Barbara shares her vision for what success looks like on trees — from timber in construction and flood risk management to air quality and human health — and explains why getting the right tree in the right place matters more than ever.

We explore whether woodland is becoming a sound business decision for farmers and landowners, the challenges of natural capital markets for smaller operators, and why policy certainty is so critical when woodland decisions can span generations.

Barbara also gives her take on the land use framework, the role of devolution in place-based decision making, and the thorny question of grey squirrels and deer — including a surprisingly practical suggestion for the NHS on venison.

And to finish, she shares the woods and trees that mean the most to her personally.

Topics covered:

• Trees as a multi-benefit crop: climate, timber, health, and biodiversity
• Making woodland economics work for farmers and estates
• Natural capital markets and the risk of a two-tier system
• Policy certainty and cross-government coordination
• The land use framework and devolution
• Grey squirrels: the missing action plan
• Deer management and the venison market
• Favourite trees and woodlands

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is 15 minutes with from the Country Land and Business Association. In this edition, CLA Chief Executive Bella Murphin meets Baroness Young, the Chair of the Forestry Commission.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hello, I'm delighted to welcome you, Barbara Young, to this conversation. And so thank you very much for joining me today. We are talking not long since the Climate Change Committee launched their latest report with a really stark message that the UK isn't prepared for the climate impacts that we're already experiencing and that nature-based solutions, including trees, are part of the answer. And we've got an England Trees Action Plan in the making at the moment. So as you get into your stride as the new Forestry Commission chair, what does success look like to you in terms of ambition on trees, but also for the people who are actually delivering it on the ground?

SPEAKER_01 0:57

That's quite a big question because the good thing about trees, I think, at the moment is that, well, always, is that they deliver on so many different agendas at the same time. I mean, obviously, climate is a big issue, both reducing carbon and and mitigating uh carbon effects, but also enabling the nation to be more resilient in the face of climate change. And there's all sorts of other uh benefits from trees. I mean, not the least productive timber. Um, we need to see more timber in construction. Uh, in this country, Scotland does 90% of its houses are timber framed. We do less than nine. So I think we need to learn a thing or two from across the border. Um, but there are also other broader issues. Um, the whole business of air quality, of flood risk management, of um human health and mental health, um, erosion of soil, stabilization of soils, reduction of cohesion runoff, all sorts of things that trees do. And what we've got to do is make sure that we're planting the right tree in the right place to uh deliver all those benefits and that they are economic to deliver, that there's an economic system behind um the whole uh way in which these benefits are delivered, so that people are incentivized and encouraged and incused to do the right thing and the right tree in the right place. So that's just a small ambition. And it's a great time, really, because there is a lot to focus on that right across government and right across um public and private landowners.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Okay, um, so I mean, you've just said it yourself there. At the end of the day, for um for landowners, land managers, our members, they will only plant trees if the numbers stack up and the risks are manageable. How confident are you that the current direction of travel makes woodland a sound business decision and not just an environmental one at a typical farm or estate scale, if there's such a thing as typical when it comes to farms and estates?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

I think planting trees um as a permanent crop obviously has an economic value and uh uh eventually, let's put it like that. And the grant system at the moment is aimed at trying to um provide the upfront funding for the establishment of a crop that will then over time uh uh provide a benefit financially as well as in all those ways that I've described. But we also need to be sure that we're encouraging tree planting in other in other places, not necessarily for its economic value as timber, but it uh to provide an income from all of those objectives that I described. So um making sure that for, for example, repair and planting is is is rewarded so that we can get the benefits of um trees being planted that will reduce runoffs, that will help with cooling rivers, that will do air quality improvement, all of those sorts of things. So it the the landowner may not want to plant trees for that particular purpose, but if those are the things that will bring in uh financial incentive, that that's something that we've got to make sure it is possible. Because landowners do plant trees at the moment, and they plant them for all sorts of reasons. It's not not necessarily always the economic ones that's front of the mind. I think we've got to get the economic system not to be a barrier. Um, but I'm pretty certain that quite a lot of private landowners plant trees because they like trees.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Um, yes, and lots of our members have a real passion for the woodlands that they manage. Uh, but that need for those things to stack up is really, really important when it comes to the bottom line and the finances. Um, and natural capital markets have a potential to play a really important part in that. Um so I'm interested in exploring that in a little bit more detail, particularly as we've got controversy at the moment as corporate investment piles into things like carbon markets. Um, and we hear quite a lot from CLA members about how potentially complex natural capital markets can be. They're sometimes difficult to understand, it's difficult to know how you can play into them. Do you think there might be a risk we end up with a bit of a two-tier system where the corporate entities and the bigger landowners, institutional landowners, have the means to get involved in those natural capital markets? And maybe people who are operating at a smaller scale, um, without perhaps the potential the amount of support that they might need, will struggle to engage with those markets?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

I think that could be a risk. I think one of the things that needs to happen, well, two things really. One is um that we need to be sure that the grant systems for smaller landowners right across the piece, not just uh the ones that we administer at the Forestry Commission, but also the agricultural grant systems that are about woodland, are integrated, that they make sense with each other and they don't and that they're as simple as possible to access. And we've been doing a lot of work, for example, in our grant schemes, to fast track, to provide ways of demonstrating to landowners where they can plant trees in ways that will get them through the regulatory system and the grant system as quickly as possible and with with more simplicity than was previously the case. And I think that's that's really important for us to do to make it easy to create the woods, as it were. Um, but I also think that we need to be sure that um we're not overcomplicating the back end, which is how you actually trade in that market. And and one of the big things that I think that's been missing over the last few years is certainty. We've had lots and lots of lurching around about what the schemes would look like and how rewards would be delivered. And I think that we've got to get at a point to a point where we've got clear schemes that are as simple as possible, markets that are as simple as possible, and that um do take account of smaller landowners as well as the larger ones and provide some certainty for the future. Because trees, even if you're planting trees as a crop, a short-term crop, um it they're still long-term and compared with many other things. We've certainly got to overcome the problem of permanence. You know, the uh some people are very nervous about growing trees because they, if they're entered into a scheme, they need to be there forever. I think there need to be other schemes that are about short rotation plantings that deliver public benefits and public goods and can be grant-aided, um, but don't mean that people have got to sterilise their land forever and take a bet on something that might not actually be supported in a few years' time.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, I mean that point about certainty is pervasive right now, the lack thereof, um, in so much to do with land. Um, and as you say, woodland decisions are often long-term ones, they're generational often, um, which is really difficult to square with that constant political and policy instability. Um what do you see as your role as chair of the Forestry Commission in helping to mitigate, address that, and help build the confidence people are going to need to make these decisions?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Well, obviously, we try to make our regulatory and um grant-giving roles as clear as possible. Our advisors on the ground are there to help uh individual landowners um navigate their way through the systems and get access not only to our own grants but to other people's. Um, so we're trying to do as much as we possibly can in that area. I think it needs a bit of political backbone, and of course, we can't overcome the the inevitable um uncertainty that's coming about what's going to happen in the next election, for example. Um but I think there are some things that we just need to do by way of getting government departments to join up. I mean, the latest hue harm on timber and construction is the announcement from um whoever, MHCLG, I suppose, on fire regulations on timber buildings, which are directly um in collision with DEF's policy on timber and construction. Um so we we just need to make sure that government bumps talk to each other and understand what competing policies clashing with each other can really do to turn people off something as important as getting trees into the ground for all the benefits that they give.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Which really does um uh hit home. I mean, that's something that we try and do with officials all the time, get them to see that big picture and show them the lived reality of our members who are often operating, perhaps more often than not, operating multidimensional businesses. They're not just doing trees, forestry, they're doing farming, they're running residential commercial tenancies, they're diversifying. Um, how do you see forestry policy and delivery evolving so that it fits alongside that reality of these multidimensional businesses?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Well, I've got a great um I've got a great hope for the land use framework approach. I mean, I've campaigned on it for umpteen years, and so it's good that we've now got the first knockings of one. But there's a lot more to be done because that ought to be the mechanism whereby you look at land as a scarce and finite asset and try to get the best possible decisions on competing needs for land uh uh made at all levels at national level, at regional level, at local authority level, and at the level of an individual's land holding. And I hope that that's gonna open up the potential of cross-government discussions about what we're trying to achieve through land, which immediately um means well, and where does tree planting fit into this? And where does other um uh public objectives like food production, like uh human health, like access, like all the other things that land is there for, um, and allow there to be a conversation based on real data, um accessible data. I think the land use framework won't work unless it becomes useful to individual landowners for making their own business decisions. Um, and if we can if we can harness the wealths of data that there is out there and make it really accessible um to people at all levels, I think we can we can really see the land use approach have a have a finite uh benefit to everybody.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

I mean, I think that's such an important message and a reassuring one about empowering landowners to make those decisions, the decisions that work for their businesses, because obviously that's what we want to see is a landscape and a framework that enables them to do that and do the best things they can the land wherever that might sit. Um I guess on the on that kind of um level, how do you see the devolution agenda playing into that? Do you think that could make things more or less easy for landowners to make those decisions that work for them and their businesses, their holdings?

SPEAKER_01 12:26

I hope it's gonna make it easier because I think it will mean that we, I mean, the regional spatial strategies are a good start. We just need to make sure that they work well. Um, and um I hope that we're gonna see through the land use framework unit in DEFRA a real push to get the data tools available to people. Um, and that that again would be a good start. So I think most landowners are very acutely aware of their locality. You know, they've that their land sits in a place, and I think place-based-based decision making is becoming more popular with devolution, um, and I think that can only be to the benefit of individual landowners, seeing that other circle are understanding the multiple pressures that are coming on land around them. So I hope it's um it's good news.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Um we can't have a conversation about trees and not talk about squirrel and deer, um, because they do present such a challenge for anyone who's involved in um in trees. Do you think enough is being done to address the problems that they create for forestry?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Um, I I take the two separately. I think um we could do more on squirrel on deer and in terms of getting together local groups around the issue. Um, but I think the direction travel in the deer thing is better. Though what is missing at the moment is a proper market for venison. I mean, there are small pockets of market in some places, but if we're really going to drive uh the economic viability of deer groups, we've got to have a route to market. And we need some of the big institutional uh uh caterers, i.e. things like the National Health Service, to take, or the prison service, or wherever, to take venison more seriously as a delicious, natural, um, healthy source of protein and get on with it. Um so that that I think is one of the missing links in the deer thing. On and I there is probably a public uh uh uh explanation ra task as well, getting the public content with the fact that um Bambi tastes nice. On the squirrels, I think we're struggling a bit. Um the the government's statement on squirrels was useful, but it really only describes the problem and some of the mechanisms that could be used for squirrel control. And as yet, we don't really have a kind of master plan for making that happen. I you know, in my naive little way when I came into the Forestry Commission, I thought that we perhaps ought to look at what total eradication of grey squirrels should look like. Um and I was very firmly told, and quite rightly so, that that's probably not practicable. We just wouldn't be able to amass either the funding or indeed the public support for that. Um but the question then arises, what are we gonna do and who's gonna do it, and where is it gonna be done, and who's how are we gonna coordinate it, and how is it gonna be funded, and how are we gonna lead it? And that's I think the next stage that we need. Are we gonna start from the red squirrel strongholds and work out with diminution of the numbers of greys in hail areas around the reds? Um, are we gonna hold our breath and hope that plant mountains are the answer to a maiden's prayer? Um do we start at the east coast and sweep through to the west coast? There's a whole load of ways of trying to do this that we could adopt. And I think we've not yet had the conversation about what the action plan looks like. And I know that that's something that you're interested in in the CLA, and I know it's something that we're interested in, the Forestry Commission. And um, no doubt many of the other players in the squirrel field would be interested in that as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Yeah, which is really exciting because it does feel like there's a a will and uh an energy to get something to happen.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Absolutely, because I mean one of my other hobby horses is the is the huge amount of native broadleaf woodland that's insufficiently managed and is not particularly good for construction timber, though I think the it would have a role in in some of the um composite construction methodologies that are now coming up. Um, but there's no point in us continuing to plant native broadleaf if they're without a proper market for the timber, even if it doesn't involve scoral attacked timber.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Absolutely. Um to finish on a slightly more personal note, um, I just wondered if there's a particular tree or woodland that means something to you and why.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

I think it's like a mother and children. You're not allowed to say you've got a favourite child. Um I mean, I I I I love a whole range of of woods. I mean, I was born in a commercial timber plantation. Um, so you know, I do value the the kind of um cathedral-like qualities of some of these plantations, but equally, you know, I'm nuts about the new forest, I just think it's such a great woodland and the Caledonian Pines of North Scotland, absolutely wonderful. I I went on an ancient and veteran tree recording trip a little while ago, and did a bowl load of junipers in the Cairngorm that were about four inches high and 50 feet wide because the wind is so terrible, but they're still ancient trees. So forests and woods come in many shapes and sizes, and I love them all.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Well, thank you so much for talking to me, um Barbara Young, and uh looking forward to working with you on squirrels and many other things.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Thank you. That was 15 minutes with. Don't forget to subscribe.