Forest Stewardship Council and National Risk Assessment Review: EIR release

Information requested

How does Scottish Forestry assess the legal requirements of forest management activities and related operational requirements under UKFS in relation to felling licence agreements?

• For example, how often are site visits made before and/or after felling licences are approved to ensure that works carried out meet any stipulations made within the felling licence agreement, and that forestry operations have complied with UKFS?

How does Scottish Forestry assess that the development and maintenance of infrastructure associated with forest management activities comply with applicable codes (e.g. UKFS) and legal requirements (e.g. Acts, EIAs), in particular for the protection of environmental values?

• For instance, how does Scottish Forestry ensure that drainage and/or culvert installation for new forestry roading is sufficient for the protection of water bodies and soil erosion?

How does Forest Service determine if an EIA is required for new forest roading?

How does Scottish Forestry assess that legal requirements related to biodiversity conservation, protected sites, and the protection of endemic, rare, threatened, or endangered species and their habitats comply with relevant environmental acts when administering felling licences?

• For example, does Scottish Forestry make desk-based assessments or visit sites to determine necessary protection of biodiversity

How does Scottish Forestry monitor that the impacts of waste and pollution from management activities comply with legal requirements, and are controlled and minimised?

How does Scottish Forestry ensure that water resources are protected and used responsibly in compliance with legal requirements when issuing felling licence agreements?

What stipulations can be made within a felling licence agreement to protect water bodies on a forestry site, and how are they assessed?

Does Scottish Forestry visits sites to ensure water bodies are sufficiently protected in active forestry sites?

Does Scottish Forestry monitor the impacts on soils from management activities, and what, if any, legal requirements are used to assess this?

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Please find attached the information we hold in relation to your request along with the answers to follow.

How does Scottish Forestry assess the legal requirements of forest management activities and related operational requirements under UKFS in relation to felling licence agreements?

- For example, how often are site visits made before and/or after felling licences are approved to ensure that works carried out meet any stipulations made within the felling licence agreement, and that forestry operations have complied with UKFS?

• As part of the felling permission application process, we require an applicant to provide adequate information regarding any constraints and sensitivities found on the site in the application form and proposed mitigation. This also includes engaging with persons or organisations who might be affected or influence on the planned works, sometimes it may include us asking for specialist advice/reports to review as part of the application.
• We then use this information alongside our own ‘desk checks’ to review and ensure the planned operations align with legal and UKFS requirements.
• Our staff would ordinarily attend the site prior to approving a felling permission to sense check the area and any other apparent site characteristics to ensure that all known constraints have been addressed and that reasonable steps will be taken during the felling works.
• Afterwards, formal consultation occurs on an application with relevant stakeholders for 28 days. The outcome of the consultation is reviewed by SF staff where outstanding points are addressed and where applicable mitigated for by the applicant.
• A felling permission is only issued once we are satisfied that the application meets all relevant legislation and UKFS criteria. The permission may include additional conditions that require operations to be carried out in a particular agreed way.
• Once a decision is made, our FLM legislation gives us the ability to suspend a felling permission where we do not feel a felling permission is being complied with, or vary, suspend or revoke a permission where we have reason to believe there is a potential risk to the environment or any living thing. If we are made of any potential issues on site during operations, we would likely attend site to assess these issues
• We may attend site after the restock is due to be completed to confirm that restocking obligations have been met and wider UKFS criteria remain in place. As discussed, some felling permissions then procure a restocking grant contract and there are other inspection mechanisms in place for this.

Felling permission guidance is available here: Scottish Forestry - Felling permissions

How does Scottish Forestry assess that the development and maintenance of infrastructure associated with forest management activities comply with applicable codes (e.g. UKFS) and legal requirements (e.g. Acts, EIAs), in particular for the protection of environmental values?

- For instance, how does Scottish Forestry ensure that drainage and/or culvert installation for new forestry roading is sufficient for the protection of water bodies and soil erosion?

- How does Forest Service determine if an EIA is required for new forest roading?

• Any infrastructure that is required as either a standalone development or as part of a wider project will be assessed against legal requirements and screened where appropriate and must adhere to the legal and good forestry practice requirements of UKFS.
• The Forestry (Environmental Impact Assessment)(Scotland) regulations 2017 set the thresholds around when Forestry projects require screening. It is under these regulations that Scottish Forestry has statutory duties for EIA, the project types are afforestation, deforestation, forestry roads and forestry quarries.
• Any road and associated infrastructure (drains, sumps) for forestry purposes assessed by Scottish Forestry would consider any effect to environmental impact assessment criteria such as water or biodiversity.
• As part of due diligence, we may require applicants to produce additional surveys and studies when necessary and further engagement with relevant stakeholders to inform our decision making on EIA processes. This is formalised if a project goes beyond screening (i.e. scoping and EIA report).
• EIA projects are subject to EIA processes in determining likely significant negative environmental effect, e.g. screening and where appropriate scoping onto full EIA consent.
• Development projects are assessed for EIA by the local authority under their regulations.

EIA guidance available here: Scottish Forestry - Environmental Impact Assessments

Managing forest operations to protect the water environment - Forest Research

How does Scottish Forestry assess that legal requirements related to biodiversity conservation, protected sites, and the protection of endemic, rare, threatened, or endangered species and their habitats comply with relevant environmental acts when administering felling licences?

- For example, does Scottish Forestry make desk-based assessments or visit sites to determine necessary protection of biodiversity

• When an application is received for a felling permission, we review any sensitivities at a site and assess legal requirements related to them, such as proximity to a protected habitat (SAC).
• As described above, we would expect the applicant to put sufficient detail in an application form, highlighting any sensitivities, and we would then carry out desk assessments using different tools that highlight any protections on the site. One such tool is our land information search tool, which is available to the public on our website. Scottish Forestry - Land Information Search
• If the site is part of a Special Protected Area or Special Area of Conservation, we would carry out a habitats regulations appraisal (HRA) to assess whether the planned operations will have a significant effect on the site. If this is likely, we could not approve any plans unless an appropriate assessment was carried out to show that it would not affect the integrity of the qualifying feature of the site. Depending on the site specifics and level of significance in relation to the qualifying feature, we would engage with Nature Scot to ascertain/mitigate appropriately.
• When our staff visit the site, they will further look out for any other environmental, or other constraints and sensitivities and if anything is noted that has not already been discussed, see previous paragraph.
• Once the HRA process has concluded, we will engage with relevant organisations during the consultation stage of the application and feed any pertinent responses into the application and apply any further mitigation.
• We would only issue the permission when we are sure all the sensitivities have been addressed adequately and may issue it with particular conditions, this might be to only carry out works at certain times of year (e.g. out-with bird breeding seasons) or state that work can only be carried out when other licenses have been received (e.g. badger licenses from Nature Scot). Note, all felling permissions have standard conditions attached (compliance with the UKFS etc.) and the responsibility of complying with legislation is with the mandated agent/landowner.
• After a felling permission is issued, if at any point further information comes to us regarding sensitivities, we can vary, suspend, or potentially revoke a felling permission or any conditions applied to that permission.

Scottish Forestry - Habitats regulation

How does Scottish Forestry monitor that the impacts of waste and pollution from management activities comply with legal requirements, and are controlled and minimised?

In Scotland, SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency) is the agency responsible for regulating waste materials in Scotland. As part of the assessment of a forestry application, we would consider the introduction of waste material to the environment as part of the UKFS assessment. This could include tree guards and fencing and if being applied, a plan to remove any non-biodegradable materials from a forest should be stated as part of that application or forest plan. Scottish Forestry and SEPA have a joint working agreement and should waste become an issue in a forestry setting, we (SF) would seek to resolve together with SEPA and the landowner/mandated agent.

How does Scottish Forestry ensure that water resources are protected and used responsibly in compliance with legal requirements when issuing felling licence agreements?

- What stipulations can be made within a felling licence agreement to protect water bodies on a forestry site, and how are they assessed?

- Does Scottish Forestry visits sites to ensure water bodies are sufficiently protected in active forestry sites?

For all applications, we assess any potential risk to water resources as part of the process to ensure that operations will not cause adverse effect.

When appropriate (informed by information provided by applicant, desk-based assessment, other information provided, pre-site visit), we would require applicants to engage with the relevant water authority as they develop their application (SEPA, Scottish Water, local authority). Then as part of the felling permission process they would be engaged again as part of formal consultation.

For particularly sensitive sites, we might require an applicant to give further detail of planned operations in an operational plan which would be issued as a condition on a permission, or under-take specialist advice e.g. private water assessment. This might look at ways a site could further mitigate the risk of diffuse pollution from run off, disconnecting drains, and crossing points for machinery. We may also ask for pollution control plans as part of our overall assessment.

We wouldn’t ordinarily visit a site during operations, but if we were notified of any issues that went against the conditions of the permission or harm was being caused to the environment, we would work with the landowner and other relevant stakeholders and can, if necessary, stop work or suspend the permission.

Guidance mentioned above also: Managing forest operations to protect the water environment - Forest Research

Recently published guidance on Creating and managing riparian woodland: Creating and managing riparian woodland

Does Scottish Forestry monitor the impacts on soils from management activities, and what, if any, legal requirements are used to assess this?

If there was evidence that a site was at particular risk, we would require applicants to input safeguards before issuing a permission to fell. This may include ways to protect the soil, such as agreed extraction routes on sites where there is limited brash available or the avoidance of areas where there was likely to be a risk of erosion.

We would not ordinarily monitor the impacts on soils during operations - we would expect applications to address this sensitivity during operations however we can undertake site visits when necessary to ensure/support UKFS compliance.

If there was damage to soils or a site where felling had been carried out, me might require steps are taken to rectify the damage where possible, using the legal process of issuing a Remedial Direction under S.54 of the Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2018.

Under EIA regulations, would not give permission for new woodland creation where peat depths were in excess of 50cm.

We use the following guidance to support decision making for soil type and forestry afforestation operations: Cultivation for Upland Productive Woodland Creation Sites - Applicant's Guidance.pdf

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EIR 202500453032 - Information Released - Documents

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