The community forest programme claims to be the country’s biggest environmental regeneration initiative but is it delivering real benefits to local people? Tony talbotof the forest of marston vale looks at the evidence

Woodlands around our towns and cities have become much more important than anyone could have imagined. In 1990, England’s community forests programme was set up by the Countryside Agency as a 30- year project – the largest environmental initiative in England. Today, over half of England’s population lives in, or is within easy reach of, one of the 12 community forests.

The core aim of the community forest programme is to establish trees, woodland and green spaces as essential components of sustainable urban living – supporting regeneration and growth, and creating better places to live. Dedicated teams work with a range of partners to focus resources and harness skills.

Improving people’s quality of life is central to all that the forests do, whether it’s helping a community to plant street trees or a multi-million pound environmental project on major derelict sites. The aim is to deliver a mix of environmental, social and economic benefits.

An independent evaluation carried out last year by Land Use Consultants (LUC) with SQW on behalf of the former Countryside Agency found that community forests had delivered value for money. According to the evaluation, the forest programme had exceeded targets by providing increasedwoodland cover (now accounting for roughly 15 per cent of new woodland planting in England since 1999), and improving environments and opportunities for access, arts and culture and at the same time regenerating local economies, while delivering landscape, biodiversity and heritage benefits.

Attracting investment

The community forests have also attracted high levels of private and voluntary sector support, pulling in £42.9m between 1990 and 2003, and they have acted as a catalyst in attracting inward investment to their areas.

For example, the South Yorkshire Forest Partnership is the lead partner in ‘Creating a Setting for Investment’ – a trans-European project to investigate the positive contribution that an attractive environment makes in shaping investment decisions.

According to Richard Walker, director of the South Yorkshire Forest, the evidence is starting to support what environmental professionals have long maintained – that there is a strong link between landscape improvements and securing inward investment. “We are now beginning to prove that link with evidential research and demonstration sites,” says Walker.

Community forests have also had a role to play in fostering good health – both physical and psychological (see case study, right). As the LUC evaluation says: ‘The Community Forests Programme’s growing contribution to the public health agenda is an important wider outcome. Through forging links with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and Mental Health Care Trusts, a number of community forests are helping to address physical and mental health issues’.

Health care professionals are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of ‘green exercise’ that is free and available on our doorsteps. Dr William Bird, an Oxfordshire GP, created the ‘Health walks’ concept for his patients in 1995 and this has expanded into the ‘Walking the way to Health Initiative’ that is run by the British Heart Foundation and Natural England, with funding from the Big Lottery Fund. Dr Bird’s message to health practitioners is: “Make woodlands your outpatients department!” In response, community forests are developing innovative projects including ‘walking initiatives’, with a range of partners including Age Concern, the British Heart Foundation and local PCTs.

Green infrastructure

Attracting investment and promoting good health are two examples of the all-encompassing role that nature can play in both regeneration and development and ‘green infrastructure’ is the new buzz phrase designed to emphasise this role.

Community forests were doing it long before the phrase was coined and they are one of the market leaders to which Right:A community forest planting area in the Forest of Marston Vale, Bedfordshire, offers opportunities for i nformal recreation Far right: Flats in Barnsley taking delivery of biomass fuel, sourced from the South Yorkshire Community Forest, for woodchip boilers others now turn for guidance; Tony Blair has commended the community forests as a model and inspiration for others. ‘Green infrastructure’ has become particularly valuable in the context of the Government’s designated growth areas. For example, Thames Chase Community Forest is a key player in the creation of the ‘green grid’ of open spaces for people and wildlife in towns and the countryside throughout the Thames Gateway area.

In another growth area, at the Forest of Marston Vale, the forest is working to transform 158km2 to the south of Bedford, planting over five million trees by 2030. With over £2.5m of Government funds, it has recently transformed 90ha of land that now serves the expanding communities in the Marston Vale. Earlier this year, it announced the purchase of another 120ha. This heralds the beginning of a much bigger project to create the Bedford River Valley Park over a 25-year time frame. This massive 820ha project, reaching to the heart of Bedford with the potential for formal and informal recreation, includes the possibility of an Olympic rowing lake.

So community forests are radically changing landscapes and modern urban life. In physical terms they are highly effective at buffering human settlements creating, as in Marston Vale, a green collar, that prevents towns like Bedford and Kempston merging with adjacent villages. As a result, they are reducing the impact of new housing. The hard edges of contemporary developments are being softened, and new life is being pumped into tired, neglected land.

So while the core vision of the community forests – a well-wooded landscape setting as the scene for improved quality of life – remains the same, the community forest programme is also able to show that what the forests do and what they can achieve is central to a whole raft of today’s most important agendas – health, sustainable communities, transport, biodiversity, inward investment and regeneration, growth, and green infrastructure. Visit:www.communityforest.org.uk Evaluation of the Community Forest Programme, prepared for the Countryside Agency by Land Use Consultants with SQW, March 2005

Visit: www.sqw.co.uk

Funding issues

At the inception of the Community Forest Programme, the Countryside Agency committed to funding the first ten years of the programme to allow the forests to establish themselves and demonstrate their value.The forests are now at the end of that period and the responses of the individual forests to the challenge of securing their futures are as diverse as the forests themselves.

All the forests have common aims but very different local opportunities and challenges. Solutions range from establishing charitable trusts, through building effective relationships with business, to ever closer working with local authorities. It’s early days to say what relationship the forests will have with Natural England but, clearly, there is a strong natural synergy between the aims and objectives of the two organisations.

The 2005 evaluation identified the private sector as relatively untapped, noting that it ‘has not performed particularly well in relation to attracting private sector support to implement community forests’ and that this is an area where greater emphasis is needed in the future.‘Linked to this is the need to align themselves more closely to the Regional Development Agency agenda, in order to access regional level funding streams,’ adds the evaluation report.

Case study: Thames Chase’s healthy woodlands

At Thames Chase Community Forest, an area of 114km2 to the east of London, the community forest has doubled the amount of publicly accessible countryside within the last 15 years. Encouraging local people to take advantage of the health opportunities on their doorstep is central to the forest’s remit.Three years ago it started the ‘Tackling Health Through Environmental Regeneration and Public Involvement (THERAPI)’ project with a steering group of health and countryside professionals and local authority staff. Three years later it has set up a community park, a green summer play scheme, therapeutic gardens for the mentally ill, and a ‘Green gym’ for a range of chronic conditions including cardiac rehabilitation, type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression and stress.

The ‘Green gym’ involves, after warming up, a couple of hours of light conservation work supervised by a trained leader. It has been a great success with many patient groups and there is research evidence, carried out by Brighton and Hove Primary Care Trust and by Oxford Brookes University that shows that it is very beneficial in providing regular exercise. It is better for the heart than step aerobics, has longer commitment rates than indoor gyms and has additional benefits by improving self-esteem.

Andy McGeeney,THERAPI project officer at Thames Chase, believes that the links between nature and preventative health are clear.“A big part of my job is working with health professionals to encourage them to understand and make use of the health opportunities available at Thames Chase. However, the evidence speaks for itself and most health professionals just need to become aware of it,”he says.

Visit: www.thameschase.org.uk

Case study: Biomass in Barnsley

In partnership with the South Yorkshire Community Forest, Barnsley Council is leading the way with a form of renewable energy known as biomass that uses wood chippings from tree waste that would otherwise be destined for a landfill site.

Barnsley is using biomass to create heating for 155 community flats, saving 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year and drastically cutting the residents’ heating bills. It is the biggest scheme of its kind in the UK and is part of Barnsley’s commitment to pursuing biomass as the preferred form of heat energy in all new and refurbished public buildings.

Robin Ridley, wood fuel project officer at the South Yorkshire Forest, is behind much of the interest in biomass in the area and he believes that South Yorkshire’s woodlands could support a booming local wood fuel industry.“It’s a win-win situation. It will bring neglected woodland back into active management, reduce carbon emissions, provide jobs, utilise a waste product and provide affordable energy,”he says.

Meanwhile, community forests in the north east are working with local university and industry partners to explore the growing and harvesting of energy crops (including coppice willow) on areas of contaminated land which are a legacy of the area’s industrial past.The project is in its feasibility stage but potentially it could help to green large areas of derelict land, clean up the land, and provide a source of sustainable energy.

Visit: www.syforest.co.uk