Thought you might like to see this: Grauniad reporting Cameron u-turn on forest sell off.

“The consultation is going to be terminated,” a government source has said. A No 10 insider added: “It’s a cock-up. We just did not think.”

Quite…

bound to come back as a rebranded policy down the line on a busy news day, this lot will flog anything!

this lot will flog anything!

Didn’t the “previous lot” sell some forests off without any consultation whatsoever ?

seems like this lady is for turning- pwnd by ed in the commons

Didn’t the “previous lot” sell some forests off without any consultation whatsoever ?

Yes, but not on anything like the scale of what Dave wanted to do. Labour sold off less than 4% of the total public forest estate in England over more than a decade. This lot wanted to change the law so they could flog the lot as fast as possible, and were very woolly over the details of the protections that would be in place when questioned.

Anyway, it’s (hopefully) all academic now, it looks like there will be more protections in place, and no sell off, so we users of the English and Welsh nationally-owned woodlands might even end up in a better position than we were in before. I’m going to open a bottle of something cheering to celebrate.

Great!

allthepies – Member

Didn’t the “previous lot” sell some forests off without any consultation whatsoever ?

Yup, a very small amount, offset by purchases too (1/39th net loss as much as the previous Tory administration, if we’re playing “but the last lot did…”)

the previous lot did sell off lots but it was re-invested in new forestry planting. However they did cock up on Rigg Wood in the Lake District. That was sold and all public access (not RoW) were fenced off. Most of the outcry has been based on this.

I hope its true about the U turn but will wait for Friday before I believe anything