Forestry expert John Clegg & Co, which this summer announced a management buyout from Royal Life Estates’ William H Brown group, is providing specialist land agency advice to the Government’s forestry review group.
Set up on March 30 to review the options for the future ownership and management of Forestry Commission woodlands, the group is expected to make its report early next year.
Among crucial issues will be the public’s right to roam. John Clegg & Co confirms that public access is on its agenda, but cannot comment further.
Other firms, some of which tendered for this consultancy role, believe that the right to roam will significantly affect the value of woodland.
Estimates range from a freehold discount of at least 25% to the loss of large numbers of private buyers from the market-place, depending on the nature and location of individual forests and management practices.
A good, if fickle, market for forestry and woodland is helping towards achieving the FC target of selling 100,000 ha by the end of the century. Its sale of the Tweedsmuir Woodlands is among the biggest commercial transactions this year. Covering almost 5,400 acres of the Scottish borders in Peebleshire, the conifer plantations are being transferred to a company for a figure well above their £2.75m guide.
Buying interest, according to John Clegg, is fuelled not only by an upturn in confidence, but by the timber trade – said in some areas to be short of stock – and by investors prepared to hold forestry for five or 10 years to clear felling. The latter were drawn, for example, to Cemmaes Woodlands in Powys, where 131 acres were largely planted in the 1960s. Strong interest led to a sale substantially over the £139,000 guide to a trust.
