Recognising the green skills gap in South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership have been providing training and opportunities to partners, land owners, and local authorities, since 2022 and continue to strive to expand knowledge further in 2025!

As the Trees Call to Action project progressed, partners of the project recognised the skills gap in the green sector in South Yorkshire especially, so a programme to help fill these gaps was put into place.

Soils training day at Winscar Reservoir. ©Laura Inglis

Training that was provided includes hands-on days such as the CAT4 and Genny (underground cable detection) training held for tree officers working on sites. The aim of the session was to introduce how to ground-truth utilities such as electricity and communications cables for safe working. Other training has included more classroom based days such as training in Biosecurity with the Forestry Commission information, and a presentation on wood based biodegradable tree tubes, a hot topic in the industry!

Their most recent activity, on a bleak drizzly day at Winscar Reservoir in the Peak District National Park was a soil and peat surveys training day specifically for woodlands. Here they teamed with the Forestry Commission who led the training and outlined the methods for identifying soils and looking at how to spot likely constrained areas and probe for peat depth, all essential training when considering best practice for woodland creation (for example not planting in sensitive areas such as in peat).

Attendance was from a wide range of organisations in and outside of south yorkshire, including colleagues active in the wider Northern Forest.

Feedback from biodegradable tree shelters session: ‘It was really useful to have an opportunity to meet up with others doing similar roles and learn about new products etc. I would be keen to come along to more meetings like this.’

South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership looks forward to future training sessions, to share best practices, knowledge and experience.