Our plan

Our Plan is the long-term and strategic guide to the work of team and partners.

It sets out our vision and fifteen overarching principles under the headings Why, What, Who and How. Area-specific spatial principles are under the heading Where. Our shorter-term Delivery Plan covers the When aspects. The ongoing delivery and impact of our Plan is showcased throughout our website.

Our emerging 2025 Plan is set out below. This has been co-created with partners, but has not yet been formally approved so is subject to change. We are consulting on it until 2nd March 2025 and would love to hear your thoughts.

The 2025 version will be the fourth iteration of our Plan, with previous versions in 1994, 2001, and 2014. Our existing Plan, published in 2014, should be referred to until the 2025 Plan is approved.

The Mersey Forest Plan and its delivery is influenced by national, regional and local policy contexts. These evolve over time, and we continue to both stay abreast of and scan the horizon for future changes, in turn helping to shape these where we can. Some key national policies include the:

• Environmental Improvement Plan, which is the first revision of the 25 Year Environment Plan. It sets out the target to “Increase tree canopy and woodland cover from 14.5% to 16.5% of total land area in England by 2050”.
• Net Zero Strategy, which sets out policies for decarbonising the UK economy to meet net zero by 2050. A key commitment is to treble woodland creation rates in England, contributing to the UK’s target of increasing planting to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025.
• National Planning Policy Framework, which sets out the government’s planning policies for England and how these are expected to be applied. It states that “an approved Community Forest Plan may be a material consideration in preparing development plans and in deciding planning applications”.

Regional and local climate, environment, Local Nature Recovery Strategies, and Local Plans include targets and priorities for tree planting and woodland creation, and support protection and enhancement of existing trees and woodland in their areas.

We will update this section shortly to include our latest national and local policy reviews.

More with trees – Acting together to grow tree cover to 30% across Cheshire and Merseyside; intertwining cherished trees with enriched people, flourishing nature, climate resilience, and rekindled hope.

Please note: 30% tree cover is our long-term ambition across The Mersey Forest, but this is a multi-generational endeavour. We aim to reach 15% tree cover by 2050.

To support the development of The Mersey Forest Plan, we commissioned a structured review into the benefits of trees and woods, as relevant to England’s Community Forests. This review is currently in draft, but we will feature it on this page when it is finalised. It underpins the Why principles in particular.

We have fed in a lot of people’s thoughts and ideas as we have created our refreshed Mersey Forest Plan. In particular:

• Our team – shared their ideas, and indirectly the thoughts of partners and communities they work closely with.
• Our steering group – had quarterly updates on the plan refresh, and individual meetings with each partner which involved other colleagues.
• An advisory group – was established to act as a critical friend, with over 60 people from national to local organisations and community representatives, with expertise relating to the range of themes covered by our work.
• Children and young people – we have been lucky to work on this project alongside the Voices of the Future and Digital Voices of the Future projects. This has allowed us to feed in children and young peoples voices in a number of ways including through the creation of a manifesto with school children, through a site visit to a local park with migrant youth, and through the development of a video game with primary and secondary school children.
• Working closely alongside the development of the Local Nature Recovery Strategies for Cheshire and Liverpool City Region, we have fed in the thoughts of the public and landowners gathered through engagement on these.