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Forum > All General Talk > Forest Sell Off Consultation - Start thinking
John Houlihan Moderator Jan 27th 2011, 12:17pm |
Today BMBO received notification of the consultation. Below is copied the information about the consultation. You, as individuals who use the forests, should express your views. BMBO as your National Governing body will make representation. Can you use this forum for constructive comments, ideas and real information such accounting details on whether this will actually save money in the long run or will we end up paying grants to private landowners. If you want to RANT and I'm sure many will, start a ranting thread, I have no problem with that but please keep this thread intellectual. John Houlihan BMBO Chairman Email from Forestry Commission: Dear Stakeholder The public consultation on the future of the public forest estate in England begins today, 27th January 2011. The consultation will run for 12 weeks until 21st April 2011. This consultation is about the future ownership and management of the public forest estate in England – land managed by the Forestry Commission on behalf of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. How to respond Online – visit our website at www.forestry.gov.uk/england-pfeconsultation and follow the link to the online consultation. Hard copy – download a copy of the full consultation document from our website, print off and complete the relevant section(s) and post it back to us. If you have any questions please contact us on 0845 3673787 or via publicconsultation@forestry.gsi.gov.uk Public Forest Estate Consultation Co-ordinator |
Emily Benham Jan 28th 2011, 5:45pm |
More access to forests for cyclists? Encourage exercise in children and adults by implementing 'free' forests - whereby all tracks and trails are open to ride. A long shot ... what about encouraging landowners to have 'dig days' so the people that use the forest can build trails, make rocky rooty sections etc, but with some car park charges or trail charges (e.g Swinley Forest and Crown Estate). Landowners make money by opening up their forest - it can still be managed and worked by the FC ... It would also be great if the New Forest could be open to cyclists - officially :-) I don't have a problem with the forests being sold, we can hope to have landowners which love sport and cycling, but I fear that this will not always be the case. Organisers and clubs will have to present themselves well when approaching landowners and aim to forge long-term relationships. Perhaps agreements could be arranged 'we will use your forest once per year for MTBO for a fee of ..., over a 5 year period' or something along those lines. I'm not really so experienced in this subject, so my suggestions are merely speculation based on my view of the world ... 'bikes rule'! |
John Houlihan Moderator Jan 28th 2011, 9:26pm |
Ok, I have read the consultation document, looked at the supporting documents and looked at the survey questions. I was very disappointed. I made a point of not looking at forums, news pages, interest groups, petition sites etc, just read and reread the consultation. These are my impressions: 1. The consultation talks high principle, but gives no detail about what we are signing up for. "Maintain public access" this could mean just current ROW, so less access than now. How knows. I'm in shock at how dishonest this consultation is. Its transparently in its agenda. So looking at what others think, I found this: http://saveourforests.co.uk/2011/01/27/defra-forestry-consultation/ Save Our Forests sum up what I think this consultation is actually about. The question is how do we tackle this. We have 12 weeks to put our views across and the following will be required: Last edited Jan 28th 2011, 11:58pm by John Houlihan (Moderator) |
Alan Hartley Jan 31st 2011, 1:24pm |
Firstly I feel pretty stupid about what I put in this post http://www.bmbo.org.uk/forum/post.php?post_id=66 I still don't believe anything I read in rags, and there were some glaring factual errors in the original leaked article, but yes it was by enlarge right. I agree with everything John's put above. The law change to enable the sell off the forests is wrapped up in the Public Bodies Bill, along with several other things which are to do with minister's ability to shut down public bodies - "cuts" if you will. This sell off appears to have nothing to do with cuts, the numbers just don't add up. I am guessing the only way the sale could be stopped is getting enough MPs to be prepared to halt the rest of the Bill on behalf of the Forestry. As John says, the "consultation" is not asking the fundamental question of "if". As to what we should respond as an organisation to the consultation. We should include concerns on general access, as obviously this will impact all of us. However, the voice of competitions like ours held in such forests will be quite small, I would doubt that any discussions so far as to what may go in clauses of sale or lease would be to honour any existing agreements for competition use. I believe our reply should focus on this. If the sale goes ahead it may be that we get access to some woodland we currently do not, but I do believe that this will be the minority case, the majority being loss of an area, and where access is maintained, cost of access will probably rise. Despite all the private woodlands one could quote as somewhere you get good access to currently, these will be different - they are going to be purchased by somebody for a reason, and that reason is very unlikely to involve us riding there. By enlarge I believe the modern Forestry Commission does a great job in keeping all parties happy. With access for public use balanced with permissions for all sorts of events, ecological projects such as deer, red squirrels and red kites, replanting of native species of trees, all around satisfying man's need for timber and timber products like paper. Last edited Jan 31st 2011, 1:26pm by Alan Hartley |
Alan Hartley Jan 31st 2011, 1:40pm |
And a very timely email from the 38 degrees petition. The Bill is being voted on Wednesday - email your MP through their website http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/MP-forests |
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