Forestry & Woodland Creation
Forestry & Woodland: For Farmers
What Forestry & Woodland changes for the person actually doing the work.
For the person running the business, the test of any farm software is whether it removes work or adds it. Woodland creation is now one of the few land use changes with four simultaneous income streams — creation grant, maintenance payment, carbon units and biodiversity units — and four separate compliance regimes to match. This module carries site design, species selection, grant application, planting record, establishment monitoring, felling licence management and the long-term stocking record that every one of those income streams depends on.
In their words
What the job actually looks like
These are not marketing personas. Each one is a distinct job with a distinct constraint, and the module is designed so that solving one does not create work for the others.
Estate manager
900 ha estate with 200 ha woodland
Needs creation, carbon and BNG income assessed together before committing land.
- Assess site suitability and constraints
- Design the woodland and select species
- Screen for EIA and consult
- Apply for creation funding
Livestock farmer
Planting 12 ha of marginal ground
Needs to know the payment covers the lost grazing and the fencing.
- Design the woodland and select species
- Screen for EIA and consult
- Apply for creation funding
- Plant and record by compartment
Forestry agent
Multi-client woodland creation
Needs application assembly and monitoring across a portfolio.
- Screen for EIA and consult
- Apply for creation funding
- Plant and record by compartment
- Protect, monitor and beat up
End to end
How Forestry & Woodland runs, start to finish
The module is modelled as a state machine, so at any point the business knows exactly which stage every record is at and what has to happen next.
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1
Assess site suitability and constraints
This is where the record starts, and getting it right here removes work at every later stage.
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2
Design the woodland and select species
The platform prompts only for what this stage genuinely needs, and carries everything forward.
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3
Screen for EIA and consult
Conflicts with scheme rules, regulatory windows and existing commitments are flagged here rather than discovered later.
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4
Apply for creation funding
Capture works offline, so this stage is completed in the field rather than remembered afterwards.
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5
Plant and record by compartment
Everything recorded at this point becomes evidence automatically, in every format that will later ask for it.
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6
Protect, monitor and beat up
This is the stage most businesses currently do twice, once for the operation and once for the paperwork.
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7
Register and validate the carbon project
Results feed the whole-farm view, so the effect of this stage is visible against the rest of the business.
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8
Manage, thin and verify over the project life
The cycle closes here, and what is learned is carried into next season's plan rather than lost.
Capabilities
What Forestry & Woodland does
Every capability below is built on the same underlying record, so entering something once is enough for it to appear wherever it is needed.
Record and plan
- Woodland creation design with species mix, spacing, provenance and zoning
- Site suitability assessment against soil, exposure, designation and deep peat exclusion
- Environmental Impact Assessment screening and consultation workflow
Operate and monitor
- Grant application assembly across the England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland offers
- Planting record by compartment with species, provenance, protection and date
- Establishment monitoring with beat-up requirement calculation
Comply and evidence
- Deer, squirrel and rabbit protection planning and damage recording
- Felling licence application, thinning plan and compliance tracking
- UK Forestry Standard compliance evidence assembly
Analyse and improve
- Woodland Carbon Code project registration, validation and verification tracking
- Timber inventory, growth modelling and yield class assessment
- Woodland management plan authoring and periodic review scheduling
Payment schedule
What is due, and when it lands
Farm support arrives in instalments from several bodies on different calendars. Set against your own overdraft, the question is not how much but when — so the ledger is ordered by date, not by scheme.
| When | Payment | From | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March | Woodland Carbon Code | Scottish Forestry on behalf of all four governments | — | Expected |
| September | England Woodland Creation Offer | Forestry Commission | — | Agreed |
| March | Countryside Stewardship | Defra / Natural England / Rural Payments Agency | — | Eligible |
| October | Forestry Grant Scheme | Scottish Forestry | — | Eligible |
| June | Sustainable Farming Incentive 2026 | Defra / Rural Payments Agency | — | Eligible |
| June | Environmental Land Management Capital Grants | Defra / Rural Payments Agency | — | Eligible |
- — Agreed and scheduled
- — Claimed, awaiting payment
- — Eligible, unclaimed
What the statuses mean
- Agreed
- Under a signed agreement with a scheduled payment date.
- Expected
- Claimed and assessed; payment date per the published standard.
- Eligible
- Your holding appears to qualify but nothing is claimed yet.
Worked example
How a business like yours would use Forestry & Woodland
The problem: Needs creation, carbon and BNG income assessed together before committing land.
What they do
- Assess site suitability and constraints
- Design the woodland and select species
- Screen for EIA and consult
- Apply for creation funding
What changes
- Hectares created
- Establishment survival rate
- Carbon units validated and verified
This is an illustrative worked example built from the module design, not a customer reference. Named case studies are published only with the business's written consent.
What we are hearing
The problems people describe to us
These are composite statements drawn from user research conversations, not attributed customer quotes. We publish named references only with written consent.
I am not short of software. I am short of one place where the same field means the same thing in all of it.
The scheme closed on a Tuesday evening. I had the application half built. Nobody told me the budget was nearly gone.
We farm on both sides of the border. Everything takes twice as long and I still cannot see the whole position on one screen.
Audit week costs me three days. Every single record they ask for is already written down somewhere on this farm.
Measurement
How you will know it is working
The module reports against these measures from the day it is switched on, so the value is demonstrable rather than assumed.
- 01Hectares created
- 02Establishment survival rate
- 03Carbon units validated and verified
- 04Grant income per hectare
- 05Woodland management plan currency
Free tool
Run the numbers for your own holding
Enter your figures and get an answer you can act on, with the method shown so you can check it. Save the result to your account or take it away as a PDF.