Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the gap between the actual supply of wood coming to the market and the forecast availability of wood over the last two years for which figures are available.

The Forestry Commission’s 50 year forecast of softwood timber availability for Great Britain estimates that 16.5 million cubic metres of softwood was available for harvest annually in the period 2013–2016. In 2015 and 2016 12.6 million cubic metres of softwood timber was estimated to have been produced.

Hardwood supply chains are relatively poorly developed, which makes it much harder to forecast likely harvesting levels accurately. The ‘50 year forecast of hardwood timber availability’ for Great Britain, which is not based on all broadleaved woodland but only on the area of broadleaved woodland with evidence of recent management, estimated that 0.4 million cubic metres of hardwood would be available for harvest annually in the period 2013 – 2016. This forecast is thought to have been an under estimate of availability because it was estimated that 0.63 million cubic metres was produced in 2015 and 0.66 million cubic metres in 2016. This should not be mistaken for any over exploitation of Great Britain’s broadleaved woodland. This is because this estimated harvest represents less than 12% of the estimated annual increment of 5.7 million cubic metres. The annual increment is the volume of additional hardwood that Great Britain’s broadleaved woodlands grow each year.