The Forestry Commission
Enhancing collaboration to ensure the nation’s forests can thrive for the future
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Trees are key to tackling the most pressing societal and environmental challenges. They not only provide mental and physical health benefits, but also mitigate the climate crisis by capturing carbon emissions, boosting biodiversity, and helping with water quality and flooding issues.
The Forestry Commission, a non-ministerial government department at the forefront of the UK’s tree-planting initiatives, aims to ensure its work makes a lasting impact. Together, we developed a new corporate strategy, uniting the organisation under a shared purpose that sets it on course to secure the future of the nation’s forests.
Shaping the future of UK forestry to meet ambitious targets
For over 100 years, The Forestry Commission has pioneered the sustainable management of the UK’s woodlands and forests. Now, more than ever, its work is of the utmost importance: by 2028, England needs to have created 34,000 hectares of new tree cover – equivalent to the size of over 47,000 football pitches – to be on track to meet legally binding Environment Act targets for 2050.
To meet the scale of its ambition, every part of the Commission must pull in the same direction. This is not easy with a distributed operating model covering three parts: Forest Services, which provides regulatory and policy-making functions; Forestry England, which manages publicly owned forests; and Forest Research, which develops leading science and evidence.
As part of the wider Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) group, the Commission navigates a complex stakeholder network and must demonstrate how its public funding contributes to the government’s agenda for forestry. With this complexity in mind, the Commission needed support in plotting its path forward.
If we are to tackle the most pressing societal and environmental challenges of our age, the message is simple: we need more trees. That’s why it’s crucial we act now. But to do so, our entire organisation needs to be bold, confident, and aligned in our approach.”
Building trust to uncover opportunities
From the outset, our team, with expertise in developing public sector strategies, stakeholder engagement, and transformation, established trust and buy-in from across the Commission. We also drew on our previous public sector engagements such as developing the monitoring and evaluation framework for Defra’s £675 million Tree Planting Programme. This enabled us to rapidly review its existing business plans and, in parallel, meet with its key external stakeholders to explore opportunities for it to clarify its role in the sector.
It became clear we needed to deliver something radically new for the Commission – something that would thread together all corners of the organisation.”
Establishing focus areas for greater collaboration
To develop the strategy, we synthesised our findings with the leadership team and co-developed the first iteration of the Commission’s overarching vision and goals. We also identified four areas of opportunity where greater collaboration over the next five years could catalyse progress in forestry for the next 50 years. These were:
- Growing engagement to inspire more people to take an active interest in forests.
- Building resilience to ensure the UK’s forests survive and thrive in the face of changing threats.
- Unlocking opportunities to make owning, creating, and caring for woodland more attractive.
- Expanding horizons by working across sectors to create the future of forestry.
With a framework in place, we worked with the individual business units to quickly test the key themes and develop a set of initiatives that could accelerate the organisation’s strategic goals. Fundamental to this was the close collaboration between the three business units that enabled us to accelerate development and present a full draft strategy to the Commission’s board at pace.
Corporate strategies often become a piece of shelfware that no one touches. It was important we created a living document that could be adapted as the forestry sector and the government’s commitments evolve.”
Activating the strategy and measuring its success
With the new strategy in place, we focused on defining a clear plan for activation. Working closely with the individual business units, we tested the alignment and scope of initiatives with the corporate strategy, from partnering with water companies to plant trees on their land to improving the role of citizen science in surveillance for diseases. We brought these plans together to form the Commission’s first integrated corporate plan in four years.
To measure the impact of the new strategy and corporate plan, we developed a streamlined performance framework that better connected Commission-wide and business unit indicators. We linked these metrics to Defra’s Environmental Improvement Plan, ensuring the Commission could demonstrate its contribution towards government commitments.
Today, the entire Commission is united in its shared purpose. It’s better-equipped to articulate its story, ensuring it can continue to safeguard and grow the nation’s forests for future generations by educating more people on the benefits of trees, accessing greater funding, and influencing policy.
The Commission’s board is also more empowered in its oversight and can continue to drive progress on key missions, including those that have seen new trees (figures are for woodland creation) in England double from 2,650 hectares in 2021-22 to 5,529 in 2023-24.
The support of PA in the development of our strategy, ‘Thriving for the Future’ was an invaluable exercise. It reflects the need for urgency, while taking the long view; beyond a lifetime. It is clear that now is the moment we need to help meet some of society’s biggest challenges by harnessing the potential of thriving trees, woods, and forests.”
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