Principles - how | The Mersey Forest : The Mersey Forest

Strategy and Policy
1. Our work and its benefits for people, nature, and climate deliver across a range of national and local strategies and policy. We maintain awareness of the policy context in which we operate and seek to inform its development.
2. We work with our partners to embed hooks into strategies and policies in order to grow a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats across sectors, and to ensure the deliverability of The Mersey Forest Plan. This includes Local Development Plan documents, strategies and policies relating to new developments and economic initiatives, as well as to trees, woods, and their benefits for people, nature, and climate.

Funding and Financing
1. Core funding comes from our Local Authority partners.
2. The team secures and manages additional funds to deliver the work of the partnership. This is from a range of public, private, and charitable sources. It includes grants, unrestricted donations, consultancy income, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental, Social and Governance funding, private green finance, funding through the planning system including section 106 agreements, Community Infrastructure Levies, and Biodiversity Net Gain, and registering new woodlands for the Woodland Carbon Code.
3. We will continue to explore innovative mechanisms to deliver our work, looking to secure a growing proportion of our funding through private mechanisms.

Knowledge and Evaluation
1. Establish The Mersey Forest as a living lab, providing researchers and universities with data and opportunities for active research and learning. Allowing us to continually seek to learn, debate, innovate, test, inform, and improve what we do, our understanding of why we do it, and who we work with.
2. Maintain awareness of the latest evidence that supports our work, in order to secure funds and inform delivery. Ensure that we also listen to and learn from communities and others, and that this contributes towards our understanding.
3. Use the latest evidence and mapping to prioritise our work in areas of greatest need for people, nature, and climate.
4. Find ways to couple knowledge with responsibility and caring, in order to grow a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats.
5. Continue to monitor and map our work and its impact on people, nature, and climate, building on long-term data gathered since 1991. Evaluate the impact of individual projects, collecting a mixture of statistics, photographs, quotes, and stories.

Communications and Marketing
1. Our communications will connect with, listen to, inform, energise, and influence key audiences from local communities to national decision makers. We will use a range of media to resonate with our audiences.
2. Communicating the impact of our work on people, nature, and climate will be key. We will both tell our story, and give people the space to tell theirs, with a view to growing a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats.

Our principles