No Jam today, tomorrow or next week...

The Woodland Management Plan was finally approved by the Forestry Commission 13 months after it was first submitted to Natural England on 1st March 2017. To get it approved, one plant name had to be substituted for another and a phrase added about consulting the Department of the Environment over our proposed pond. Otherwise it was the same document that I submitted a year earlier.

Approval results in being entitled to a grant of £1000. Assuming that this would be triggered off by the approval, I then waited for the money to appear in our Rural Payments' Agency Account. Stupid. You have to submit a claim. (I knew that). I completed the claim form I found online and sent it to the Forestry Commission. They were efficient and told me to submit it to Natural England, who administer the approvals. Natural England were also eficient and told me that I'd submitted it on the wrong form, an FC form, and it needed to be on their form. (I knew that). Or online at the Rural Payments Agency. But that was incomprehensible and blocked me after the first couple of pages as it it isn't designed to cope with small woods' claims like ours. But since Natural England couldn't find a copy of their claim form to send me, I asked the NE Helpline to take me through the online RPA form. Very nice, helpful person had to unlock the online form to allow me to proceed. (He has a parallel system that allows for small woods claims.)

So I submitted the claim online through the RPA. However, very effciently I was soon contacted by Natural England to be told that I couldn't progress without proof of official Forestry Commission approval. So I sent the Management Plan that had been signed by the FC Woodland Officer. I was contacted again, very efficiently, to be told that that wasn't the right document, but that I needed an official approval letter. (I knew that.) But I had never got one from the FC. So, I contacted the FC to ask for it and they, very efficiently apologised for the oversight and promised to expedite the issuing of the letter........ And there we are, coming up to 16 months later. I blame the Tories.