13th July 2020
CEO Update – July 2020
Knepp cows (photo courtesy of Knepp Castle Estate)
CEO Update – July 2020
With Covid-19, it has been an incredibly busy year so far. The following are highlights and special updates of work undertaken since March.
Local groups – we have worked hard to keep them engaged and supported during the last three months with two Zoom meetings in the absence of an annual network day this year. During these Zoom meetings, Clare, our partnerships consultant, Jim, our training and technical officer and myself as CEO, as well as Russell, our Chair, discussed with local groups:
- Co-producing a Covid-19 risk assessment for local group events (which will not be implemented until government guidance changes to allow this, but is now ready to go);
- Diversity, equality and inclusion – asking their views about what they would like to see the ATF do;
- How they wish to continue to work alongside and be supported by the ATF – this was already planned as part of the EFF2 grant, and is also feeding into the next stage of the strategic review.
Many of our local groups’ volunteers are juggling jobs, childcare and managing ongoing personal and professional changes as a result of coronavirus, so we were happy to have 15 people on the first call. They were keen to input, retained their enthusiasm for their volunteer roles, and were sensible and supportive about the ATF Covid-19 response and its plans for the future. We’ve also been keeping contact with two prospective new groups: Northwest and Northeast England, and the new group, Wales (South and West).
Training – with training one of the main aspects of the ATF’s work affected by Covid-19, Jim Mulholland and our consultant trainers continue to be flexible in all training plans for 2020/2021. Jim is working on a webinar with Vikki Bengtsson and Tom Joye (the three original partners who developed the VETcert 2-day course) which should be finalised by early August. We hope that this will encourage people to improve their knowledge and to begin to work towards attaining VETcert. We are working as fast as we can on this and exact launch dates tbc – keep watching our newsletters for more information.
Communications – the whole team is now involved in communications, keeping you in touch through Twitter, Facebook, our newsletter and website and with new ways of reaching you… Our first podcast was with arboriculturist, Luke Steer, on ancient trees, their habitat, history and threats. This podcast had positive feedback and 160 downloads (10/06/2020). Episodes are hosted for free for 90 days. We aim to produce something genuine/authentic on the broad theme of AoVTs and habitat once a month in order to engage with our online audience.
Podcast feedback so far:
- I really enjoyed your chat with Luke. I liked the relaxed and informal vibe but also got a lot of interesting information (which was some good revision from the chats with Luke in March!) Anyway, hope you have some more in the pipeline?
Richard Arnold, Director, Treecraft
- I just listened to your ATF podcast on the way to a survey. Great stuff, learned lots and it was thought provoking – thanks! You should do another.
We also had some positive comments on our website, inviting further engagement. Since this podcast was released, we have published a second episode which focusses on bryophytes. We will promote this in our next newsletter.
External relationships and partnerships – the CEO has two main learnings from this last quarter: (i) there is a great demand for expertise from the ATF – this is positive, however, as usual in the charity sector the demand is sadly beyond the ATF’s current capacity to deliver, (ii) we will review our expectations and ability to deliver tangible outputs as part of our partnerships, through our strategic review, setting new priorities and making sustainable commitments and structures.
National Trust – as part of the ATF’s long-standing relationship with the National Trust (NT), the ATF’s new CEO was introduced to NT colleagues, including Luke Barley, alongside Russell, Clare and Brian Muelaner (past Chair and still close-stakeholder of ATF) and ideas for future joint-working were discussed.
- Tree Council – the ATF is involved in an informal alliance with the Tree Council, including a planned discussion in August on the English government’s Tree Strategy Consultation.
- Arboricultural Association – sharing ideas with the CEO at AA about their work on diversity.
- Woodland Trust – Emma Gilmartin and Saul Herbert are recently back from furlough at the Woodland Trust and we are once again planning with them the chance for the ATF to jointly lead a group of other experts to update some of the Ancient Tree Guides (ATGs). The ATF was also on the panel for the Tree of the Year with the Woodland Trust in early July.
- 2021 Summer Forum and Suffolk County Council – discussions continue with Gary Battell about the possibility of going to Suffolk for our summer forum 2021.
Strategy – our future priorities will be decided by our trustees during our strategic review which is already underway. 170 of you have already given us your views about what these priorities could be by responding to our strategy survey last month. The next stage of the strategic review over the coming three months will:
- Continue to involve as many of you as possible through focus groups and 1-2-1 interviews,
- Continue to build on these priorities from these discussions,
- Assess the ATF’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats and what our role should be, based on what makes us unique compared to our collaborators and competitors,
- Start to shape how we will involve experts and others, volunteers and local groups, partners and design a fresh structure,
- Build on our past, and design for the future of the organisation.
Policy – the following pieces of work were undertaken and have been wholly the work of a countrywide group of volunteers, across our policy working group.
Government/Local Government
- The England Tree Strategy consultation is now open and our volunteer Policy Working Group is creating the ATF’s first draft. The team and these volunteers will also engage other ATF contacts such as local groups to get an official ATF response ready by September.
- Another opportunity to influence national government includes the soon-to-close Environmental Land Management Scheme consultation (ELMS – deadline by 31 July). Again the ATF will be submitting a response via our Policy Working Group.
Planning
We’ve responded to three planning issues: one at Cheltenham; the other related to housing at Silwood Park where our volunteer policy team refute the use of RAVEN to identify AoVT trees; and the final at Havant Reservoir where a projected loss of ancient wood-pasture is under threat as part of the Forest of Bere.
Guidance given to others
- The ATF’s Policy Working Group responded to the Arboricultural Association’s guidance for Cellular Confinement Systems (CCS) for roads /development consultation, emphasising inappropriate use in proximity to veteran trees.
- The ATF’s trustee, Jill Butler, presented at a Webinar on wood pasture and open grown trees.
The ATF’s response to Covid-19 – back in March we took the decision, like many other charities, to postpone or cancel all of our face to face meetings or events until further notice, just a few days before lockdown. We reforecast our annual budget for April 2020 to March 2021, just a few weeks after the original had been signed off by the board of trustees. Since lockdown, the team, our contractors and trustees have made huge efforts to re-plan the work of the ATF, to keep you informed and to give you chances to come together online. To inform our ongoing decisions related to Covid-19, we are taking advice from a range of places including government guidance and charity umbrella bodies, other training providers, and other tree charities as well as drawing on insights from our network of volunteers. We are working to support local groups to run, should they wish and when we assess it is safe, in-person events that have been Covid-19 risk-assessed, and also our training is being reworked (see training and local groups information above). However, at the moment, we are still advising our staff, contractors, trustees and volunteers not to meet in person, and we will inform you when this changes.
Behind the scenes – despite huge fundraising efforts, like many charities through the pandemic, we are still working to make up for our loss in income from both training and our summer forum, and we are making a number of emergency and other grant applications to ensure we can move strongly into the next financial year. This is even with a hugely generous additional grant from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation of over £25,000 for which we are very grateful.
We have started to upgrade the financial systems, and will be moving our finances onto a fully online system for the first time. In addition, we are undertaking an ICT migration onto a single cloud provider and our volunteers should see differences in how this will allow us to communicate with you in small groups by the end of the year. Finally, we are overhauling a large range of internal policies: data protection (GDPR), safeguarding and diversity have recently being approved or rewritten and a whole new staff handbook and policies to improve the way we involve volunteers is soon to come so that we are ready for our new priorities and structures following the strategic review.
Laura Alcock-Ferguson, CEO, Ancient Tree Forum
Email: CEO@ancienttreeforum.co.uk
Twitter: @LAlcockFerguson
Posted by: Laura Alcock-Ferguson
Laura is the Ancient Tree Forum's CEO. She has led complex change in the not-for-profit sector for twenty years and has a Masters in Business Administration. Laura joined the Ancient Tree Forum in October 2019.
