Lantra exists to help our industries better understand and meet their skills needs. We do this by working in partnership to:

• Attract and retain a diverse and competent industry workforce
• Train people to work safely, productively, and sustainably
• Encourage and support a commitment to Life-Long Learning.

The programme of work being developed to support the delivery of the Nature for Climate Fund has identified that to support government ambitions, there needs to be a significant increase in the UK forestry sector workforce.

This anticipated new woodland creation, alongside sustainable forest management of existing woodlands and ongoing maintenance and management of woodlands created under the programme, will require new professional foresters, supervisors and operatives, and associated occupations.

The aim of this research is to determine the workforce uplift that would be required to meet this target and to extend work already undertaken in Scotland.

To this end, the aim of the work tendered for here is to provide the sector with quantitative and qualitative information that will allow us to better understand the capacity of the current workforce in terms of numbers, demographics, occupations, skills gaps, and shortages, across the supply chain from nurseries to timber processors.

It will also allow us to better understand numbers, occupations and skill levels required to deliver woodland creation, management targets, and deliver increased utilisation of available wood fibre, and where the potential gaps might be.

There is more detail in the tender document here, and we would ask anyone considering tendering for this work to read the specification carefully and to either raise any queries with us directly by emailing Liz Barron-Majerik or to register to attend the online Q&A session via the same email address. The Q&A will be held at 10am on 20 April, 2021.