The Forestry Commission has developed a series of sensitivity maps, based on nationally available and consistent datasets, to indicate where there are likely to be fewer sensitivities to woodland creation.
These maps will help to indicate to landowners whether there is likely to be potential to establish new woodland on their land, and where there may be sensitivities that would preclude woodland creation.
The maps do not indicate that, where there is a low sensitivity to new woodland being created, that planting will be agreed by the Forestry Commission, the regulator for woodland and forestry projects in England. However, the low sensitivity areas have fewest identified constraints to address, and it should be easier to agree creating new woodland here than in other areas.
Likewise, creation of new woodland, particularly of native woodland, may be appropriate outside ‘low sensitivity’ areas, but the appropriateness of proposals in these areas will again be determined by the Forestry Commission, including through responding to the views of Natural England, Environment Agency, Historic England, the Local Authority and other stakeholders, where relevant.
The Sensitivity Maps exclude all land that is unsuitable for planting, including urban areas, existing (and assumed) woodland and habitats that are considered too wet, too rocky, and too salty to support the growth of trees. This is achieved through restricting the Sensitivity Maps to the following land covers, based on the most recent update of Landcover Map:
Acid grassland
Arable and horticulture
Calcareous grassland
Heather
Heather grassland
Improved grassland
Neutral grassland
The spatial datasets and individual layers of those datasets that define land as unsuitable and low, medium, or high sensitivity for woodland creation in the Full Sensitivity Map version 3.0, the Low Sensitivity Map and their variants are set out in the document here:
www.gov.uk/guidance/a-guide-to-forestry-commissions-sensitivity-maps-for-woodland-creation
Attributes:
‘Sensitivity’ = the sensitivity to woodland creation level the land has been assigned.
‘Area (Hectares)’ = the area in hectares of the polygon.
Lineage:
This is version 3.0 of these layers, having gone through several iterations where new data inputs were added and changes made to how these were treated as sensitivities for woodland creation. These are the first versions of the layers to be published as Open Data.