Transparency data

Minutes: 23 September 2025

Published 5 June 2026

Forestry Commission executive board 132nd meeting minutes, Tuesday September 23 2025, 14:00–17:00 in person at Bristol and via MS Teams.

1. Welcome, updates and introductions

The Chair opened the meeting. No apologies had been received.

The Chair update included an update on government priorities – they are focusing on growth, health and water quality. The Forestry Commission can work towards all of these and may need to manage relationships to communicate our value and articulate our contribution towards these aims.

The board briefly discussed the fraud and audit paper presented at the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee and whether the current internal audit programme is meeting the expectations and needs of each agency and the Forestry Commission as a whole.

2. Minutes of the executive board, 30 June 2025 and matters arising

The minutes for the meeting of the Forestry Commission executive board of last meeting were agreed as a true and accurate record. All action points were discharged.

3. Synergy/Enterprise Resource Planning

The board’s discussion centred around KPMG’s report which summarised Forestry Commission’s current position and direction of travel. The board agreed option 4 in principle to ensure readiness to move to a new system, whether Synergy or another option. The board agreed to do a formal project with a full project assessment initiation to be informed about cost, suppliers, systems and any internal resource implications. The board agreed to appoint a project manager with suitable expertise to spearhead this activity and report to the executive board at the 8 December meeting.

Action

Derrick, Amanda and Paula to proceed with recruitment of an appropriate grade and skillset for a project manager for this, with an ambitious aim of enough information for a decision on 8 December.

4. Health and safety update

6 Reporting of Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrence Regulations incidents reported in last quarter due to Lyme disease across all three organisations. The health and safety team is looking at what else the organisation can do to protect staff exposed to higher risk, including looking at possibility of vaccinations against the virus tick-borne encephalitis.

All incidents with volunteers and contractors were of a minor issue, including insect bites. The board queried the figures presented and asked the presenter to clarify following the meeting as an action point.

A number of safeguarding issues have also been reported. This is due to outreach and staff being more informed. Support is also being provided to staff as needed.

Expect the apprenticeship programme to be a viable route to recruit staff into roles. Look out and look after programme going well and is ready to be rolled out to other parts of the Forestry Commission.

Forestry Commission is about 83% compliant with occupational health screening for appropriate job roles, aiming for 90-100% compliance by end of year. This is higher compliance than peers.

Action

Head of Health and Safety to clarify the figures presented in the slides.

5. Mandatory training

Head of Health and Safety and technical training presented overall completion rates of mandatory training for parts of the Forestry Commission. The team is working with Forest Research to ensure that these figures can also be recorded and tracked for them. Forest Research are migrating to same system as used in Forest Services/Forestry England which should resolve this issue.

The board briefly discussed the cadence of mandatory training modules and whether a one year or three year cycle was appropriate. The agreement was that most need to be topped up on a 3-year cycle, with a drumbeat of comms to cover the interim period.

Action

Head of Health and Safety to check the cadence of mandatory training period and whether it is appropriate for all staff in the Forestry Commission.

6. Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) action tracker

Some overdue actions were noted in the tracker, and that the organisation is starting to fall behind on these.

The Chair noted that proportionality needs to be considered for the security audit actions. Some of the questions don’t apply to the Forestry Commission, especially with some visitor facilities designed to be open to the public and so a nuanced response is required.

7. Forestry Commission strategic risk register

The board discussed the risks presented in the register. Derrick had asked the board to review and provide comments directly to update the register. Discussion was about:

• whether the staff risk should be amended to identify specific roles
• to change the green finance opportunity to a risk as well as an opportunity
• clarify that the risk on resilience is to woodland establishment due to extreme weather events, which are now the new normal and how to mitigate against this
• to update resilient forest risk to cover climate change as it takes account of wind and fire and to escalate this to an issue as this is already happening
• business planning to remain as a risk
• to expand FCR007 to include the spending review risk on delivering sufficient funding for strategy delivery and legal obligations
• to reword recruitment and retention risk, taking account that different parts of the Forestry Commission have issues in different specialisms

Action

Members to review the Forestry Commission strategic risk register and provide feedback to Corporate Governance Manager by 10 October.

8. Corporate plan

Head of Performance presented the suggested cadence of performance updates covering the forums and timings of reporting. Andrew proposed three reports: in-depth report to executive board, summary report to the board of commissioners, and a high level summary against the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) outcomes framework for ministerial performance meetings.

There was also provided a performance update on Q1 on key activities.

The board asked for wording to be updated on timber to market, volunteers and Thetford open habitat activities.

The board endorsed the tiered approach and cadence. As there is potential for lag between meetings the Board agreed to review and update the performance update ahead of ministerial quality performance reviews via correspondence.

Action

Summarise the number of reporting metrics to Defra.

9. Forestry Commission finance

The Forestry Commission is expecting around £29.1 million of transfers which is likely to include Nature for Climate Fund and for science funding. There was some overspend reported in Forest Services and Forest Research, £18.9 and £17.1 million respectively. Otherwise the picture is positive in comparison to last year.

There is potential for a capital departmental expenditure limit (CDEL) underspend coming towards Forestry Commission. The board discussed whether it would be feasible to take on any capital projects at short notice without overcommitting.

Business planning has started in Director General areas in Defra, however Forestry Commission has not yet been commissioned. At the time of the meeting, there was hope the Forestry Commission would see indicative numbers soon across the three years. There were also still efficiencies to be made, with £144m from arm’s length bodies.

Action

Mike, Tristram and Amanda to consider how Forestry England could absorb any potential in-year CDEL if approached by Defra.

10. HR/people board update

People board and terms of reference

Following on from the last executive board meeting, the people board has been set up. The people board met on 28 August as a kick off meeting to set agenda and expectations for the future. Terms of reference have been presented to executive board and the board asked for a minor amendment.

The board was presented with the pay project and milestones. There is a 12-month fixed-term appointment in post to take this work forward for the Forestry Commission.

Action

Amanda to update terms of reference to reflect that quorum needs to have at least one representative from each business.

Pay update

Pay offers are out, currently waiting for trade unions to conclude their ballot. Timing is critical to ensure HR have enough time for a revised pay system. Aim is to put the pay notice up on 10 October.

Tier 1 council

The council meeting was well engaged and supportive.

11. Travel policy

The purpose of this item was for endorsement of refreshed expenses and sustainable travel policies, provide a steer on consultation aspects with the Forestry Commission Trade Union (FCTU), and an early steer on the Car Provision for Employees Scheme (CAPES) scheme as it is unlikely government will allow the civil service to use a salary sacrifice scheme for electric cars.

The board agreed to giving FCTU 30 days to comment on the changes. Paula, Derrick and Amanda to approve the refreshed version.

The potential cost of a CAPES scheme, including administration of the scheme, will be presented at the next meeting. The board asked for this to be one option and to also provide consideration of practical aspects such as equality issues, how to tie in with grey fleet, any tax implications and what happens when somebody leaves.

Action

Paula to suggest a list of amendments to the policy wording to Director of Engineering.

12. Safeguarding

There has been a marked improvement in reporting for safeguarding. Audit actions have been completed and signed off. The training numbers are being more effectively monitored, including for Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) cleared roles, which is due to be complete end of this year for compliance with DBS. Senior leadership team have also undertaken piloted training which will move on to phase 2 in December and January.

Looking forward the work is to improve training. There are plans for a training programme and a communications plan for raising awareness.

13. Woodland Water Code

The board talked about how to enable delivery of this code, which will include design of documentation, methods, rules and a framework. There is currently discussion with Defra but there are capacity issues there and who takes on the extra administrative and verification responsibilities for a trading scheme.

The board endorsed this work and have asked for a proposal that can be taken to Defra and the two nations of the code and how it can be rolled out. There was agreement that the Woodland Water Code is needed sooner than the 3 years currently proposed.

Action

Science Group Leader to consider how to progress this work beyond research and development stage and advise Richard, Anna and James how to propose this to Defra.

14. Data protection

The data protection forum has made good progress against the GIAA audit recommendations, with three recommendations already completed. Revised data protection policy is with the Security Risk Management Forum for review.

Data breach reporting has improved. The board was also made aware of the thematic nature of reported data breaches and there is an aspiration to provide communications to staff to raise awareness to tackle some underlying issues.

15. Any other business

There was no other business and the meeting ended.