A New Pathway for WSWG

Over the past few months we’ve been signalling that the West Stormont Woodland Group project is entering a new phase. January’s update marks an important shift: while our long-term vision of bringing Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into community ownership remains unchanged, we are now exploring a different route to get there.

Following constructive discussions with Forestry and Land Scotland, WSWG is considering the possibility of a Management Agreement as an interim step. This would allow the community to play an active role in shaping how the woods are cared for, used and developed, while full acquisition remains a longer-term goal.

Crucially, the woods have now been removed from the Forestry and Land Scotland disposals list. This means they are no longer at risk of commercial sale – a significant and positive outcome made possible by more than seven years of sustained community effort and support.

Looking ahead, a Management Agreement offers a practical way for WSWG to influence woodland activity in line with our shared vision, while building experience, partnerships and momentum for the future.

As this new chapter unfolds, continued community involvement will be essential. If you’d like to be part of shaping what comes next, we’d love to hear from you – whether through signing up for updates, getting involved, or simply staying connected.

Alongside this update, we’re also pleased to share a short film created in partnership with Climate Connect Perth and Kinross and Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust, telling a little of the WSWG story and the wider power of community action.

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Find out what WSWG are really doing in the Woods

Things are moving and changing quite fast as we head into 2026 so, for the latest news, please read the section above and follow the links. We are updating the rest of our website as quickly as we can. Thank you for your interest – and for your patience.

West Stormont Woodland Group is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) formed with the specific aim of bringing Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into Community Ownership.

“Community Wellbeing and Resilience through Eco-forestry for the Planet and Forest Diversification for People.”

This excitingly achievable goal is being pursued under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 Part 5 through the auspices of the Community Asset Transfer Scheme (CATS) operated by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS).

The woods, Taymount Wood at 155ha, and Five Mile Wood at 134ha, are currently in public ownership and managed for the Scottish Government by FLS.

The easy and most enjoyable bit of this project is the year-round programme of events for all ages and abilities, across the wide-ranging themes encapsulated in our Window on the Woods Vision. See our News and Events page to find out about our past and present activities.

We also spend a lot of time building and benefiting from connections throughout the local, regional and national community and environmental networks of which we see ourselves a meaningful part. That too is covered in our back history of Community Monthly Updates which are mailed out to members and supporters along with event notices. See The Bigger Picture for an idea of the role we see for Taymount and Five Mile Woods in our local patch and why local outreach to other community and environmental organisations, projects and stakeholders is so important for us as part of West Stormont Connect.

Before 2018, locally speaking, we probably took Taymount and Five Mile Woods for granted. But when FLS intimated their intention to sell both woods, the risk of a solely private commercial future for them for repeated timber cropping came into sharp focus. We knew they harboured a surprising amount of biodiversity for plantation woodlands, partly because of the predominance of native tree species in both woods and the rich compartmental complexity of Taymount Wood in particular, along with their recent management under LISS (Low Impact Silvicultural System). We realised, however, that the only way they would be able to fulfil their ecological potential in their own right and as a mainstay in any hopes for local nature recovery at landscape scale would be through allowing the woods to grow old – to 300 years and more – rather than never allowing them to exceed the limited biodiversity capacity of “teenage” woods by consigning them to repeated short term rotational timber harvesting every 50-60 years. These woods are not the best for timber anyway. That is a key reason why they appeared in the FLS disposals list in 2018.

They are in fact perfectly suited for a long-term if not permanent shift in management objectives to those primarily prioritising nature and community.

In a nutshell, that is why WSWG continues to persevere so hard to bring these woods into community ownership in the face of an economic climate where forestry land prices and community funding availability for anything bigger than relatively tiny woodlands seems increasingly far apart. Records show that between 2018 and 2023, FLS sold about 6,250ha of woodland, of which 11 sites totalling 234ha were sold to communities under CATS. At 155ha and 134ha respectively, Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood each represent about 0.03% of the publicly-owned National Forest Estate.

But one small step on the road successfully achieved!

Even though WSWG has not yet succeeded in purchasing the woods, we were delighted recently when FLS advised us that they had removed both Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood from their current disposals list due to the added value for community and nature added since 2018 by the WSWG project. Many things could change this in future, but for now, the woods have been saved from imminent private commercial interests on the open market and WSWG can continue pursuing our goal of community ownership with one less weight on our shoulders.

We would therefore love to see another 0.06% of the National Forest Estate transferred to community ownership for nature recovery and community, one way or another.

How we intend to do this is set out below and we welcome anyone who believes they can assist in achieving this to step in and help us in this next phase.

Focus on the Future

Alongside our ongoing delivery of community events and activities, the future is all about moving on with our applications for funding for woodland acquisition and further developing the strategic ideas and timeframes for how the project will go forward.

Community Ownership - Our Phased Approach

Whilst we have not lost sight of our intention to bring both Taymount and Five Mile Woods into community ownership and still have our integrated masterplan of complementary proposals for the two woods at the ready, in our agreement with FLS in 2023 to a phased approach, at this point in time, we have been invited to submit an offer for Taymount Wood in the first instance with the option to buy or lease Five Mile Wood thereafter.

Our first goal therefore is to raise funding for:

A two-year development phase bringing in professional help in key disciplines and specialisms to bullet-proof our transition to community ownership from Vision to Reality
Purchase of Taymount Wood and a two-year start-up period to underpin the transition to our projected staffing complement and programming of income streams to support the project long term

Again, we are looking to team up with anyone who can help us in our mission, so that we can furthermore embark on implementing our long-awaited Woodland Management Plan for Nature Recovery alongside ramping up our community benefit work as a staffed organisation.