woodland stewardship

[sawmonkey]

how does lads and lasses,

anyone had any sort of dealings with woodland stewardship or better woodland for wales (as i'm from gods country)

 

i've been asked if i'm interested in managing a 70 acre block of douglas and larch (and some other odds and sods thrown in) but the owner wanted to know about grants etc towards costs, any dealings, pointers etc would be helpful

 

cheers

[Pine Marten]

Hi sawmonkey

 

Better Woodlands for Wales (BWW) has a suite of grants available to promote forestry. This includes, but is not limited to, fencing, roads, planting, subsidised felling, Rhody clearance etc. Depending on the type of forest and what the owners objectives are grant aid is available at 25%, 50% or 75%. Funding is paid in line with the WIG (Woodland Improvement Grant) calculator which gives an average cost for specific operation - not on receipted actuals.

 

To enter the BWW Scheme you need to engage the services of an FC approved Management Planner (such as myself!)- this cost is covered by the scheme.

 

If you need further information on the scheme or want to have an informal chat about what the scheme can do for you/your client then please do not hesitate to contact me. I cover all of Wales and am available to give forestry management advice on a wide range of aspects throughout the country - and the Welsh/English borders

 

Hope this helps

 

Cheers

PM

[Justme]

IF you are going for a grant make sure you do all the stuff you want to do but they wont like first. If you do it after claiming but before getting paid out they will default on the payment as happened to me. The stuff they dint like had nothing to do with the work they were paying for (I say paying as the 50% they worked out was more like 25% of real costs). It was a real pisser as some of the work we did how they wanted it & not how we wanted it so we could claim.

[Pine Marten]

IF you are going for a grant make sure you do all the stuff you want to do but they wont like first. If you do it after claiming but before getting paid out they will default on the payment as happened to me. The stuff they dint like had nothing to do with the work they were paying for (I say paying as the 50% they worked out was more like 25% of real costs). It was a real pisser as some of the work we did how they wanted it & not how we wanted it so we could claim.

 

All work should be pre-agreed between the owner and the Management Planner. Using the WIG calculator the Planner should be able to give the owner an accurate indication of what he may / may not be entitled to and cost accordingly. Because the WIG calculator is based on average costs per operation (unit costs etc) there may, in some circumstances, be the ability to meet the costs of the operation via the grant. Careful planning of real costs married with what the owner is likely to receive from the scheme is essential.

 

Although its a good point you raised about not having one work operation messing up BWW or vice versa!!

 

PM