Scottish Forestry has taken enforcement action to halt all forestry operations at the Stobo woodland creation scheme in the Scottish Borders with immediate effect.
In addition, the whole forestry project will now go through a new screening decision to determine whether a Forestry Environmental Impact Assessment is required.
The move comes as new information recently came to light during Judicial Review proceedings which were due to be heard in the Court of Session later this year.
That Judicial Review challenged Scottish Forestry’s initial decision to give approval to the Stobo woodland creation scheme back in February this year.
In the run up to a court hearing in mid-August, written papers by the petitioners made Scottish Forestry aware that the forestry agents acting on behalf of the landowner had carried out extensive blanket herbicide spraying at part of the site prior to submitting their woodland creation application.
There was a requirement for the forestry agents to inform Scottish Forestry of this work before the woodland project’s screening assessment took place, but this did not happen.
This undisclosed information would have been material to Scottish Forestry’s decision making on whether the woodland plan should be classed as a Forestry Environmental Impact Assessment project. It has been agreed that the Court be asked to set aside the original decision.
Scottish Forestry will now screen the project again, taking into account this new information on herbicide spraying and all other new relevant information, analysing it and assessing its impact on the environment.
Brendan Callaghan, Director of Operational Delivery at Scottish Forestry said, “As with all woodland creation applications that are submitted to us, we need to have all the relevant information available in order to make informed decisions.
“Unfortunately with the Stobo application, a material piece of information was not disclosed by the applicant as we started the screening process, where we review the likely environmental effects of the project.
“In this case we should have been notified of large-scale overall herbicide spraying prior to the application being submitted, so that we could take it into account when we were assessing the project, but in this case we were not informed.
“Consequently, Scottish Forestry have taken enforcement action to stop the developer’s work at Stobo so that the woodland creation application and the new information can be reassessed.
“We would like to thank the Stobo Residents Action Group for bringing this new information to light, during the court proceedings. We hope that in moving forward we can work constructively with all stakeholders including the local community, forestry agents and developers.”
Image: From John Muir Trust website