Written question WQ83954
- Asked by
- Janet Finch-SaundersConservative
- To be answered by
- Minister for Climate Change
- Tabled
- Due
- Answered
- Time to answer
- 7 days
Question
What consideration has the Minister given to ensuring that Natural Resources Wales has a department with centralised operational planning for forest engineering and tree harvesting, establishment, planting, weeding, and replacing?
Answer
Answered by Minister for Climate Change
Natural Resources Wales does have a central function for planning these activities under the Head of Land Stewardship. In 2019/20 Natural Resources Wales completed a reorganisation to move to a hybrid regional and functional structure. For forestry on the Welsh Government Woodland Estate, the Land Stewardship department sets strategy and standards and does the high level planning, monitoring of delivery and national scale risk management. The actual operations are largely managed by the six land based integrated Place teams. This hybrid model is designed to achieve the optimum balance between efficient central control and local, place based prioritisation.