CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Community forests in England

type of forest in England

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ5154958
Source-derived summary

England's community forests are afforestation-based regeneration projects which were established in the early 1990s. Each of them is a partnership between the Forestry Commission and the Countryside Agency, which are agencies of the British government, and the relevant local councils.

Most of the designated areas are close to large cities and contain large amounts of brownfield, underused and derelict land. When the forests were created the average forest cover in the designated areas was 6.9%, and the target is to increase this to 30% over about 30 years. As most of the land is in private ownership the schemes rely mainly on providing landowners with incentives to plant trees. However the forests contain areas of publicly accessible open land, and increasing public access is one of the objectives.

The table below lists the community forests. As some of them straddle county boundaries they are listed by region and town or city.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Community forests in England” as type of forest in England. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 151-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Community, forests and England can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as type of forest in England. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5154958. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Community forests in England”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Community forests in England primary sources, Community forests in England archive and Community research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Community forests in England”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Community forests in England” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.