On 26 March 2021 the Forestry Commission published the Woodland Carbon Code Version 2.1.  First published in 2011, this voluntary code encourages a consistent approach to woodland carbon projects, with the aim of reducing carbon in the atmosphere through tree planting. This updated version of the Code provides some key changes which will impact landowners who are in the process of, or considering, signing up to the Woodland Carbon Code.

Registration

Arguably the most important change is that from 30 June 2021 projects will need to be registered prior to any planting commencing.  This means for landowners who have already planted in winter 20/21, you will need to submit registration documentation before the deadline of 30 June 2021 to be compliant.  If you are a landowner planting in winter 21/22 then you must ensure you register before you plant.

New template documentation

From 30 June 2021 all documents submitted for any stage of registration must be done using the new template documentation which can be found here. Therefore if you have already started drafting the documentation for registration, validation or verification these will need to be submitted before 30 June 2021 to be accepted.  If you haven’t yet started drafting the documentation then unless you are planning to submit the documents by 30 June 2021, these new templates will need to be used.

New guidance

Fresh guidance documents have been published to aid the completion of documents for additionality, carbon calculations and the monitoring of your project from year fifteen onwards.  The modifications contained in this new version are designed to ease the administrative burden faced by landowners in the registration and ongoing monitoring process of projects. 

For further information about tree planting and woodland carbon initiatives, please contact Ross Simpson or your usual Burges Salmon contact.