Our principles

These principles set out the crucial supporting work that underpins our delivery. This enables us to better establish, look after, and nurture a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats, bringing more benefits for people, nature, and climate.

12. Strategy and policy​
    1. Keep abreast of the national and local policy context in which we operate, staying alert to changes and reacting to new policy drivers, and helping shape policy development to ensure ongoing support for our work. Demonstrate the relevance of our work and its benefits for people, nature, and climate to policy makers, and how it delivers across a range of national and local strategies and policy.
    2. Work with our partners to ensure strong support for The Mersey Forest Plan and its delivery within their own strategies and policies. This will help to nurture a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats across sectors, and help us to establish and look after more trees, woods, and other habitats for the benefits that they bring. Partners strategies and policies include:
       • Local Development Plan documents.
       • Any relating to new developments, regeneration, and economic initiatives.
       • Highways and transport.
       • Any relating to trees and woods.
       • Any relating to the wide range of benefits that trees and woods can bring, for people, nature, and climate.
    3. Contribute to place making, new development, regeneration and restructuring, by securing recognition to The Mersey Forest Plan within Local Plans.
       • Paragraph 152 of the National Planning Policy Framework says “Community Forests offer valuable opportunities for improving the environment around towns and cities, by upgrading the landscape and providing for recreation and wildlife… An approved Community Forest Plan may be a material consideration in preparing development plans and in deciding planning applications. Any development proposals within… Community Forests in the Green Belt should be subject to the normal policies for controlling development in Green Belts”.
       • Trees and woods should create the setting for, and be a key part of, new development, regeneration and restructuring.
       • Existing irreplaceable and mature trees should be retained wherever possible, and appropriate replacement ratios developed for any trees lost.
       • Trees should be incorporated as an effective and safe part of new street scenes and highways.
       • Secure private sector conditional funding for this green infrastructure and its maintenance (see 13.2).
    4. Contribute to neighbourhood planning, setting out and supporting local priorities and aspirations.

13. Funding and financing​
    1. Secure our basic core funding from our local authority partners through our partnership agreement.
    2. Secure and effectively manage additional funds from a range of public, private, and charitable sources, ensuring that they are used to deliver benefits for people, nature, and climate. Funding sources include a mixture of:
       • Grants.
       • Unrestricted donations.
       • Consultancy income.
       • Private green finance, including Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental, Social and Governance funds.
       • Funding secured through the planning system, such as section 106 agreements, Community Infrastructure Levies, and Biodiversity Net Gain.
       • Funds secured by registering new woodlands for the Woodland Carbon Code.
    3. Explore innovative funding mechanisms to deliver our work, securing a growing proportion of our funds through private mechanisms. Funding must be sustainable and diversified, ensuring long-term investment rather than relying solely on short-term grants. Incentives for private-sector involvement could enhance financial stability.
    4. Advise and support landowners and managers on the funding available to establish and look after trees and woods on their land, and on how different payments can be combined. 

14. Data, knowledge and evaluation
    1. Ensure evidence underpins everything we do. We will stay abreast of the latest multi-disciplinary evidence and best practice. We will endeavour to learn from a range of sources, including academic literature and research, our own data and monitoring, and from knowledge gained by listening to local people, including children and young people and people who are seldom heard. We will use this evidence to:
       • Guide our work to establish, look after, and nurture a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats.
       • Improve our understanding of the benefits it brings for people, nature, and climate and how to have the greatest impact.
       • Inform who we work and the best ways of engaging with them, coupling increased knowledge with responsibility and caring.
       • Guide where we work. We will take opportunities to deliver at scale, but also prioritise areas of greatest need for people, nature, and climate.
       • Inform our underpinning work on influencing strategy and policy, to secure and make best use of funds and investment, to guide our communications and share the latest understanding with others.
    2. Monitor and map our work and its impact on people, nature, and climate, building on long-term monitoring.
       • Our Delivery Plan sets out shorter term targets. Progress towards these will be assessed annually and shared on our impact webpage.
       • We will evaluate the impact of projects through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative evidence, including numerical data, images, and people’s experiences and perceptions collected through interviews, surveys, and observations.​
    3. Establish The Mersey Forest as a living lab. This will:
       • Bring together multi-disciplinary researchers and create evidence partnerships.
       • Allow researchers and universities to work with over 30 years of our monitoring data, and gain new insights from this.
       • Provide opportunities for active research and learning alongside our delivery.
       • Allow us to continually learn, debate, innovate, test, inform, and improve what we do, and to share findings with others.

15. Communications and marketing
    1. Engage, connect with, listen to, inform, energise, and influence key audiences, promoting ways to get involved. This includes local communities, landowners, partners, businesses, and schools and young people, as well as national decision makers and funders. We will use a range of media to resonate with our audiences, and reach as many people as possible, showcasing ways for different people to get involved.
    2. Share information about the importance of trees and woods, working to couple a growing knowledge and understanding of trees and woods, with increased care and responsibility. Appeal to both minds and emotions to nurture a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats, using the latest evidence from our work, as well as others, to underpin our communications.
    3. Communicate the impact of our work for people, nature, and climate.
    4. Tell our story and give people the space to tell theirs, with a view to nurturing a culture of trees, woods, and other habitats.