Let’s talk about why Farley Moor is an inappropriate location for a Forest Holidays development…

Farley Moor is part of Matlock Forest (Matlock Moors) which, according to Forestry England’s website, is comprised of ‘seven coniferous woodlands’. Farley Moor is one of those seven woodlands.

Forest Holidays’ claim that the development (75 cabins with car parking spaces and hot tubs, a café, a reception area, a bike hire store and a play area) would only use 2.5% of Farley Moor seems completely implausible to us. If the 2.5% is in reference to the entirety of Matlock Forest, it is worth pointing out that the key difference here is that Matlock Forest is not continuous woodland: the seven comprising woodlands are separated by farmland, open moorland, significant roads and private land. Whilst it’s difficult for us to estimate what percentage of Farley Moor will be impacted by the development, it looks to be exponentially more than Forest Holidays have claimed. We are in conversations with the Planning Officers at Derbyshire Dales District Council to seek clarification on these claims.

Matlock Forest is one of the smallest Forestry England sites at 483 hectares. It is markedly smaller than most other Forest Holidays sites, such as Delamere Forest (972 hectares), Thetford Forest (18,730 hectares), Cropton Forest (3,662 hectares) and the Forest of Dean (10,500 hectares).

Here’s the kicker: Farley Moor is just 188 hectares. This is a fraction of the size of most of the forests that Forest Holidays typically target for development. This is why we believe that Farley Moor is a completely inappropriate location for a Forest Holidays development and that the proposed development would cause a disproportionate level of damage.

In addition to this, the Forest Holiday sites in smaller forests have fewer lodges than has been proposed for Farley Moor. Consequently, the development at Farley Moor would have the highest number of lodges per hectare out of all of Forest Holidays’ existing sites by quite a stretch (0.4 lodges per hectare vs. an average of 0.12). This does not take into account how spread out the sites are within the forests, but it does give you a good idea of the scale of the proposed development within the context of Farley Moor.