Woodland Dedications: UK Forestry Scheme Records from 1947-1981

The Dedication Woodland Scheme was introduced in 1947 to encourage landowners to retain land in forestry and adopt good practice. Basis III was added in 1974, providing grants for new planting and broadleaf supplements, before the scheme closed to new applicants in 1981. This dataset from the Government Digital Service records land under this historical UK forestry policy.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the adoption and duration of forestry dedication agreements based on scheme entry and closure dates.
• Studying the impact of policy changes, such as the 1974 introduction of grants for broadleaves.
• Tracking land ownership changes and their effect on covenant status, as dedication terminated on a change of ownership.
• Investigating the prevalence of 'Negative Covenant' status for schemes without an active Plan of Operations.

Strengths

• Clear historical timeline with specific policy introduction (1947, 1974) and closure (1981) dates.
• Distinguishes between different scheme bases (I, II, III) and covenant types, suggesting structured policy data.

Limitations

• Row count, file formats, and column-level documentation are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; data freshness is unverified.
• The description is medium-completeness; actual data quality and granularity require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Likely contains administrative records from the Dedication Woodland Scheme.

Time Range

Covers scheme activity from 1947 to 1981, with records potentially extending beyond.

Freshness

Last updated date is unknown.

Geography

United Kingdom (inferred from the 'OGL-UK-3.0' license and 'eu_open_data' platform).