Woodland Advice

South West Forest operates a free service providing farmers and landowners with independent advice to help them to make informed decisions about creation of new woodlands and management of existing ones. We feel the key to offering good advice is to listen to the customer’s requirements and get a clear understanding of their objectives.

Attractive grants are available for woodland creation at the moment with the availability of a South West Forest Supplement on top of the Woodland Grant Scheme and Farm Woodland Premium Scheme. At South West Forest, we are keen to help people make appropriate use of these support mechanisms but to avoid taking short term decisions which are entirely grant led and may be unhelpful in the long run.

Our verbal advice is backed up by detailed written reports that aim to set the advice in a broad environmental context. It is important that the new woodlands we help to create are beneficial to the wider environment and bring some of the public benefits identified in the South West Forest Development Plan.

Please check that your land is within the South West Forest here...

If you would like to make an enquiry about obtaining woodland advice you can use our Enquiry Form here...

South West Forest will...

South West Forest woodland advice takes a whole farm view

The South West Forest will take a farm scale view of the factors influencing woodland creation, in the light of the recently developed Woodland Opportunity Strategy.

A larger view of this example plan is here...

South West Forest will:

Encourage appropriate woodland creation to meet owner’s objectives and enhance the environment.
Encourage management of existing woodlands and increased use of local timber and non-timber outputs.
Provide training and best practice events in a wide range of woodland and other rural skills.
Help communities to develop new or existing woodlands through our Community Woodlands Programme.
Maintain a range of demonstration sites and a monitoring programme to ensure good practice is developed.
If you would like to make an enquiry about obtaining woodland advice you can use our Enquiry Form here...

Looking for Land for Planting?

There are a number of land agents who carry details of land for sale that is suitable for planting. We have a list of land agents on our Links page here...