Jenny was at the Glastir Woodland Management Stakeholders’ meeting on Tuesday on behalf of LlyG and has the following titbits to pass on:
- The Glastir Woodland Management scheme will open for applications in January 2012 and will be open for about 3 months. This is for management of existing woodland and is different from the Glastir Woodland Creation scheme. The application process looks as if it will be reasonably straightforward and will involve a visit by a Woodland planner to advise on what works will be funded to acheive priority environmental/biodiversity objectives for your woods. You should find out pretty quickly if you’ve been accepted onto the scheme but the contracts won’t start until 1 Jan 2013 and will run for 5 years.
- If you would like to offer your woods for the scheme you need a CRN number. If you are already in BWW then you will already have a CRN number – if you don’t then it is a good idea to get your number now. If you’re not sure what a CRN number is or how to get one then please contact Jo and we will do our best to help.
- If you are already in BWW it looks as if it should be possible to also apply for Glastir but ONLY for activities which are not already in your BWW or for parcels of land not already in the scheme.
- An advert for people to apply to be Woodland planner for Glastir is due on Sell2Wales very soon. If you would like to apply but are not registered with Sell2Wales then contact Jo and we can forward the advert to you once it appears.
- The Forestry Commission is beginning the process of putting together ideas for the next RDP – ie grant funding including Glastir, Leader etc. from 2014 onwards. Llais y Goedwig is included in the stakeholders the FC will be working with on RDP. This is great news and makes it even more important to get our Manifesto ready – see http://llaisygoedwig.org.uk/what-we-do/engage-with-policy/ for where we’ve got to with this. Please let us have your ideas for how grants etc could be used to support the development of community woodlands – you can add to the blog on the website http://llaisygoedwig.org.uk/2011/08/12/a-llyg-manifesto/, the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Llais-y-Goedwig/ . Or by post, phone, direct email etc. to Jo or Jenny.
For those of you who asked to be forwarded the Sell2Wales advert for woodland planners for Glastir – the ad isn’t out yet. It is somewhere in the government procurement pipeline! We will let you know as soon as it is out.