Part one: debating the case for a national woodland register

*This is Part One of a two-part series about woodland ownership and responsibility, and is intended to be read before Part Two. It asks whether the UK needs a dedicated register connecting every woodland with the responsible person, and whether such a register could provide continuity across changes of ownership. Part Two, Should woodland ownership carry an obligation to plan?, considers the separate and more difficult question of what responsibility should entail. In particular, it asks how planning can distinguish deliberate non-intervention from neglect without presuming that every woodland requires active intervention.*

At 31 March 2025, the UK had 3.29 million hectares of woodland, of which only 44 per cent was independently certified as sustainably managed (Forest Research, 2025). In England, a different administrative measure puts 57 per cent of woodland in sustainable management, below the government’s stated ambition of 67 per cent (Forestry Commission, 2025). Taken together, these figures are not directly comparable, and none are a complete measure of ecological condition. They do, however, point to a persistent policy problem: governments expect more from woodland than existing arrangements are consistently delivering.

Forestry is devolved, and this series draws its closest detail from England, with Scotland’s registration system quite separate. Wales and Northern Ireland are framed by comparable standards. The UK Forestry Standard applies across all four nations, and the questions this series raises about registration, planning and responsibility apply to all woodlands everywhere in the UK. A register or planning duty introduced by one administration may need its own settlement with the others, whether through parallel legislation, mutual recognition of records, or a shared UK-wide system; this series does not attempt to resolve which.

Woodlands are expected to store carbon, support wildlife, slow water, protect soils, provide places for recreation and produce more home-grown timber. The majority of woodland area in the UK is not owned by the state; in fact the country has one of the lowest levels of state ownership of woodland in Europe. Their ecological or productive condition therefore depends substantially on the decisions, resources and continuity of private owners and managers.

Successive governments have responded with grants, advice, standards and regulation at particular points of intervention, especially planting and felling, all attempting to nudge private land managers towards ‘doing the right thing’: complying with government policy, delivering public good outcomes. Yet engagement remains uneven.

This raises a question that deserves serious consideration: should ownership of woodland have to be recorded in a dedicated register?

The question sounds straightforward but it is far from it. There are perhaps four main policy choices:

A register of responsible parties
A lasting record for each woodland
A duty to have a management plan
A duty to carry out particular management actions

I approach the subject without having a settled position myself. My intention is not to advocate a new regulatory regime, but to ask whether the present arrangements are fit for purpose and what a credible alternative would need to address.

The information gap

Overall, the UK has very poor information and data about its woods.

There are certainly some powerful research datasets, especially the National Forest Inventory (which is a random and anonymous dataset) which tracks extent and conditions of a representative sample of woodlands.

The Land Registries (three separate bodies: England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) record ownership but overall public registration is incomplete. Registration is compelled only when a defined event occurs, chiefly a sale, mortgage, gift, inheritance, or the death of a sole proprietor. Woodland, especially smaller amenity parcels and larger holdings kept within families or estates across generations, is disproportionately likely to be excluded from that cycle, inherited rather than sold, or held for decades without a mortgage. Unregistered land in England and Wales is about 14 per cent, but close to 40 per cent in Scotland.

The devolved forestry authorities hold records associated with grants, felling licences and approved plans; certification bodies hold others. Scotland also has a compulsory Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land, designed to reveal who ultimately exercises influence or control.

The difficulty is that these systems address different aspects and seek to support different outcomes. There is no complete, woodland-specific record connecting every parcel with the person currently responsible for it, its management history, any current plan, known risks and the support already offered. Information can be incomplete, dispersed between institutions or lost when land changes hands.

Registration by itself would not bring a single additional hectare into management. Yet it could provide an enabling infrastructure: a way to identify and communicate with owners, retain knowledge across transfers, target advice and incentives, organise landscape-scale cooperation, and respond more quickly to pest and disease outbreaks, wildfire or storm damage. Whether any of those opportunities could be realised would depend on what government bodies and the sector might built around a register.

Research is clear its warning against treating private owners as a single and simple population. An English study identified six markedly different woodland owner types, ranging from investors and multifunctional owners to conservationists and amenity owners (Urquhart and Courtney, 2011). A wider review concluded that UK owners’ decisions reflect diverse objectives and circumstances, and that policy must engage with those differences rather than assume a predominantly commercial motivation (Lawrence and Dandy, 2014). Distrust of institutional advice and owners’ own ecological worldviews can shape whether they act at all, with those holding the strongest environmental convictions sometimes resisting intervention on the grounds that nature will self-adjust (Ambrose-Oji et al., 2020). A register could make more tailored engagement possible, but of course it would not guarantee it.

What exactly might be registered?

The proposition of a woodland register becomes clearer if four chief aspects are considered in turn:

One | An ownership and responsibility register:
Which land is categorised as woodland? Who owns it? If the owner is a company, trust or distant landlord, who can make decisions and who should be contacted in an emergency? This is principally a question of transparency and administrative reach.

Two | A woodland record:
A persistent, transferable record could hold an approved management plan where one exists, past grants and permissions, significant interventions, condition assessments and relevant risk notices. It would belong to the woodland as an institutional record, while ownership changed around it. Access would need to be carefully tiered: some information could be public, some available only to the owner and competent authorities, and some aggregated for research and public reporting.

Three | A planning obligation:
Registration could trigger a proportionate statement of objectives, evidence and intent, captured in a management plan compliant with the UK Forestry Standard. This might range from a short initial declaration to a fuller approved management plan for larger or more complex holdings. Management planning is examined in the second article in this two-part thinkpiece because it raises issues beyond registration.

Four | An action obligation:
In clearly defined circumstances, the law could require an outcome or intervention, particularly where inaction creates material risks beyond the property boundary. Biosecurity notices in the UK already embody this principle. Similarly, Spanish regional forest law obliges owners to carry out preventive treatments set out in regional plans and allows the administration to act and recover the cost where an owner does not comply; a model examined in Part Two. A broader duty in the UK might apply to environmental or other factors, such as wildfire prevention, public safety or damaging invasive species. However, it should be recognised that this would be a greater ‘intrusion’ than a basic duty to register or assess woodland condition.

This is exactly why the argument must not be reduced to a case ‘for’ or ‘against’ a woodland register. The UK could adopt the first two aspects (Registration + Record) without either of the others (Planning + Action). It should also be recognised by authorities that action duties without good information, due process and adequate support would be difficult to administer fairly.

In support of a woodland register

Government reach and relationships

Government cannot offer well-targeted help, communicate urgent threats or convene neighbouring owners efficiently if the responsible parties are difficult to identify. A register could turn a partial and incomplete set of sporadic transactions and applications into a lasting and enduring relationship between woodland owners and authorities.

Cost efficiencies

A register could plausibly reduce some of what government currently spends identifying and re-identifying owners for grants, licences and enforcement. This is an efficiency argument analogous to the one HM Land Registry itself makes for completing the general land register, where greater completeness was projected to save around £42 million over ten years, chiefly through reduced fraud and faster dispute resolution (Ministry of Justice, 2025). Note: no comparable costing exists for a woodland-specific register, so this remains an inference from a related case rather than a proven saving.

Fragmentation

A register could help overcome fragmentation. Many woodland operations are uneconomic or ecologically ineffective when organised parcel by parcel. Deer and grey squirrel control, access, timber harvesting, wildfire planning, habitat connectivity and pest surveillance all make more sense across ownership boundaries. Knowing who owns and manages adjoining woods is not sufficient for cooperation, but it is often a prerequisite. Authorities could help support collaboration and cooperation between multiple woodland owners, helping to create economies of scale and promote coordinated action (planned or emergency).

Continuity

A register could support continuity. A woodland outlives its owner and inevitably outlasts any management plan. A record that is passed on with the land could preserve knowledge of why decisions were taken, what the long-term aims have been, what public money has supported, and what future commitments remain to be achieved. It might also support constructive engagement if the woodland is ever transferred to a new owner, rather than a point at which precious knowledge disappears.

Payment for ecosystem services

A register could provide the practical infrastructure on which a reciprocal bargain for delivery of ecosystem services between owner and state could be built. The Office for National Statistics estimated the asset value of measured UK woodland ecosystem services at £382 billion in 2021. Timber and woodfuel accounted for 3.9 per cent of that estimate, while carbon sequestration accounted for 39 per cent. These are modelled natural-capital values, not cash revenues available to either owners or government: woodland owners bear the main costs of stewardship, with some support from government, while society receives most of the benefit, and there is presently no reliable mechanism connecting the two. The UK already has two working examples. Woodland Carbon Code units ‘only exist’ once entered on the UK Land Carbon Registry, which enables transfer of unit ownership, retirements to be checked publicly, and the same credit prevented from being sold twice (Woodland Carbon Code, registry rules). The Biodiversity Gain Site Register, which Natural England must maintain by law, exists so that habitat units created on one piece of land cannot be allocated against more than one development (Natural England, 2024). In both cases, registration has been essential to support payment to landowners.

In relation to payment for ecosystem services, two opposing arguments arise. One is that public benefits justify minimum responsibilities attached to ownership. The other is that society should pay more of the cost of securing them. A defensible social contract would have to contain both: reasonable expectations of stewardship matched by reliable advice, finance and practical capacity. A woodland register could play a key role in supporting both aspects.

Risks and issues

Bureaucracy

There is a risk that the administrative effort and more paperwork becomes an ineffective proxy for woodland condition. It is already the case that England’s sustainable-management indicator is largely an administrative measure of woodland covered by qualifying plans, grants, licences or certification. A new register could improve the evidence base, but it could also create a more elaborate account of owners and intentions while little changes on the ground.

Enforcement weakens relationships

Compulsion to register a woodland may damage trust between woodland owners and government bodies, undermining the relationships needed for action. Effective conservation policy depends not only on the substance of incentives and rules, but also on fair procedures, good information, trusted relationships and owner involvement (Tiebel et al., 2022). A register designed chiefly as an enforcement tool could weaken those relationships.

A cautionary tale from Oregon, USA: Statewide wildfire-hazard maps were linked to building and vegetation-management requirements for landowners in the highest-risk areas. Owners feared wider consequences for insurance, property values and regulatory burdens, despite legislation restricting insurers’ use of the maps. Following sustained opposition and an earlier withdrawal for revision, Oregon repealed the mapping and associated requirements in 2025. The lesson is that registration and classification of land can become politically consequential. Owners need to understand how their data is used and how they may be deployed, with the ability to correct errors, appeal decisions and know who may use them and for what purpose.

Capacity

Registration creates expectations: accurate records, accessible advice, data protection, dispute resolution and proportionate enforcement. If these functions are underfunded, the system will impose costs without creating much value. The least engaged owners, whom a compulsory scheme is intended to reach, may also be the hardest and most expensive to support. Government would need to commit sufficient funds over the time necessary to successfully complete a woodland registration scheme and all that would come with it.

Privacy

There are legitimate questions about privacy and property rights. Public authorities may need to know who is responsible for a woodland without making every owner’s personal details openly searchable. A woodland record could contain commercially sensitive or security-relevant information. The case for collecting every data field, and for allowing each category of user to see it, would have to be made explicitly. Woodland owners would need detailed reassurances about privacy.

Short lives, long horizons

A woodland planted today will pass through several owners, policy regimes and generations before its trees mature. Owners change through sale, inheritance, corporate restructuring and family circumstance. Knowledge is lost. Objectives change. Meanwhile, decisions not taken or poor management choices can shape the woodland for decades.

A persistent woodland record could therefore be much more than a regulatory database. It could be a form of institutional memory: retaining plans, observations and commitments across changes of ownership, and making the next decision better informed than the last.

Yet the state also suffers from short horizons. Grant schemes are redesigned, departments reorganised and political priorities reversed on timescales much shorter than any forest rotation. It would be unreasonable to ask owners to make century-scale commitments through institutions that government itself will not maintain. Any new settlement would need durability, interoperability and a credible promise that records and support would survive administrative fashion.

A proportionate route to testing the idea

If the proposal were explored further, the sensible starting point would be a staged test of the least intrusive system capable of supporting public good.

Such a test might begin with a basic register of woodland parcels and responsible contacts, linked where possible to existing land-registration and forestry records. It could then trial a transferable woodland record when a holding changes hands or enters a public scheme. Advice and incentives should be offered at the same gateway, with trusted intermediaries able to support owners who would not naturally approach government.

The test should be judged against practical questions:

Does it reach owners currently absent from forestry systems, rather than merely those already engaged?
Does it help owners and public bodies respond to threats or cooperate across property boundaries?
Does a transferable record preserve useful knowledge when ownership changes?
Are the burdens proportionate, especially for small and low-risk holdings?
Are the data collected, access rules and appeal arrangements trusted?
Can the responsible institutions maintain the system over decades?
Does the register enable better decisions, rather than simply producing better administrative statistics?

Registration would not itself improve a woodland. It would provide the foundation for a better relationship between owners, woodlands and the state. Whether that relationship became supportive, coercive or merely bureaucratic would depend entirely on its design.

The UK has spent many years trying to bring more woodland into sustainable management through voluntary engagement. I believe it is reasonable to ask whether the state needs a more complete line of sight.

That leaves the question taken up in the second article in this series, Does every woodland need a management plan? If a register establishes who is responsible, should responsibility include a duty to consider and record the woodland’s future? And can such a duty recognise deliberate non-intervention as responsible management, rather than treating visible activity as the only evidence of stewardship?

Part Two: Should woodland ownership carry an obligation to plan?

Who is responsible for the UK’s woods?

Part one: debating the case for a national woodland register

The information gap

What exactly might be registered?