This piece is an extract from our Latest from the Woods newsletter, which is emailed out at 4PM every Friday with a round-up of the week's top stories. 

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BY now, you may well be sick of reading about budgets in the UK. If so, this may not be the newsletter for you, so you have my permission to click off, pour yourself a cuppa, and click on to any of our excellent pieces on the website ... 

For those of you hanging around, let's get to it.

When Rachel Reeves unveiled her Autumn Budget, fury in rural circles followed, with changes to inheritance tax sparking nationwide protests and discontent among the country's farmers.

Similar tax tweaks to business property relief will also hit commercial woodlands valued at over £1 million, but, perhaps not surprisingly, the reaction to this has been rather more muted. 

One unifying thread did appear when news the devolved governments were due "record settlements" emerged, prompting forestry leaders to call on pervious cuts to the sector's budget to be restored. Scotland, you will remember, swung the axe in December 2023, reducing Scottish Forestry's funding by 41 per cent. 

Almost a year on from that "devastating blow", finance secretary Shona Robison was back in Holyrood this week to unveil her spending plans for the coming 12 months and it appears she has surrendered to demands ... sort of. 

The overall new draft budget for Scottish Forestry has been revealed as £83.1 m for the year ahead, an 18.5 per cent increase on current funding, with £53 million been allocated to the Forestry Grant Scheme, a 17 per cent increase from the £45.3 million in 24/25.

£46.9 million is to be allocated for woodland creation, a 20 per cent increase from the budget of £39.2 million from 24/25, and is expected to support over 11,000 ha of new woodland.
So far, so good, until you dig a little deeper. 

Stuart Goodall was among those to call for funding to be diverted back to forestry Stuart Goodall was among those to call for funding to be diverted back to forestry

What was missing from that headline announcement (itself criticised by industry body Confor for prioritising broadleaved woodlands over productive plantations) was the fate of Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS). That won't surprise you when you discover that its budget has been cut once again. 

What was a £45.6m fund in 2023/24 became £31.5m last year. Now, FLS – one of the key timber producers in Scotland – will have to do it all with just £27.2m. 

To put that into perspective, it is the only branch within the Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands portfolio to have suffered quite like that during recent years – which probably tells you all about its place in the eyes of ministers.