While the Woodland Trust wants to plant trees on natural plains in
mid-Herts, other publicly-funded bodies are chopping trees down.

Here is one story relating to tree-chopping in Hertfordshire:
http://www.stalbansobserver.co.uk/news/3595329.Fury_at_call_to_axe_trees/ .

Meanwhile, the Woodland Trust wants to plant an entire forest just seven
miles away.
http://www.stalbansobserver.co.uk/news/3555635.Huge_forest_planned/

And the locals have strong opinions about it:
http://www.stalbansobserver.co.uk/news/3552938.UK_s_biggest_woodland_in_Sandridg\
e_/

The St Albans TPA commented on this last link (9.10am Wed 6 Aug), which
was published in the hardcopy paper on 13-Aug-08.

Subsequently, Des Hughes - a long-time local activist for local matters
- has contacted me. He wants to start a local pressure group for other
matters, but it seems that TPA and that group might have some common ground.

The plain text of my comment (somewhat long!) appears below.

Kind regards
--------------------

The plan of the Woodland Trust to turn ancient unforested land north of
Sandridge into forest raises many questions about the sustainability of
the proposed forest.

Having checked the website of the Woodland Trust, I can see no
indication of how - or whether - the forest is going to be managed after
its 12 years maturity, so there is no indication of what permanent
annual expenditure - if any - the forest will require to keep it.

Moreover, the website carries no due diligence on the effects of the
proposed forest.

It looks set to become the taxpayers' problem within 15-20 years.

In 2007, the Woodland Trust received about 13.2% of its gross income
from grants - i.e. £3.697m - of which the majority comes from a variety
of government- or parliament-controlled bodies, funded by the taxpayer.
The Heritage Lottery Fund, the Forestry Commission, local authorities
(probably county councils for the most part, they have the least
democratic visibility), Department for Communities etc, European
structural funds, Department of Environment etc, Rural Payments Agency
and so on all contribute to the income of the Trust.

So the taxpayers of St Albans are already substantially paying for the
forest, even before it has started.

According to a leaflet from The Woodland Trust that local residents
recently received, the Trust seeks to raise £100,000 from its local
appeal. For the year ending 31 March 2007, St Albans District had 50,322
dwellings. A contribution from each taxpayer towards the £100,000 would
thus be as follows: band A £1.11, B £1.30, C £1.48, D £1.67, E £2.04, F
£2.41, G £2.78 and H £3.34.

Those numbers are small, but they represent only the £100,000 opening
gambit. Because the Woodland Trust has no analysis of future costs,
risks and externalities, it is impossible to gauge the permanent
on-going cost that the Trust would somehow need to fund.

Until we know more about how the proposed financing of the forest's
management, maintenance and protection over the next 20 years (at
least), we should remain sceptical about the sustainability of the
forest. I would like to see credible numbers that stand up to due
diligence.

There are many reasons to support the project, ranging from a symbolic
atonement for climate change to providing biodiversity that we need for
our everyday lives (for example, a shortage of bees or other insect
pollenators means the price of bread goes up. Yes, seriously. It does).

But if climate change has taught us anything, it is that we must measure
every aspect of a man-made idea to ensure its sustainability. Any idea
that simply sounds like a "jolly good idea" or "broadly right in
principle" should be immediately suspect. Sustainability includes
aspects environmental, economic and financial. All three must
substantially prove sustainability for the proposal to count as sustainable.

A failure in any one of these aspects guarantees non-sustainability,
meaning that we will have wasted resources in building something flawed
that simply creates future problems (that we are too lazy to think about
in the present). For this proposed forest, potential future problems
will range from the effect on the local water supply to the incidence
(or risk) of insect-bourne diseases not yet present in the UK. The
planet is still going to warm up. Having used resources planting the
forest and having spent as-yet unforecasted resources on maintaining the
forest, will we in the future find that our cost of delivering water to
local residents increases, or that the cost of more accessible medical
treatments (once thought a preserve of exotic holidays) increases?

As the forest will be substantially a public good, how do we fund these
likely future costs? Taxation? Exactly: that's my point. The
population will continue to age over the next 20 years, meaning that
there will be fewer and fewer people of working age paying tax to feed a
state that continues to grow and spend and grow and spend more. There
will be less private cash to bequeath to the Woodland Trust, making it
more reliant upon grant funding from the state. A vicious, greedy,
state-centric circle, a reality far removed from what you thought would
be a "jolly good idea".

The solution is to press the Woodland Trust repeatedly until the numbers
fall out. I would like the Trust can prove the environmental, economic
and financial sustainability of the forest - without reliance upon any
taxpayer or grant-issuing body - and show legal steps to entrench its
sustainability, independent from government.



--
Martin Thornhill
Local organiser of St Albans Taxpayers Alliance