Scotland Forestry Powers Order 2026 Explained

If you looked at this legal title and felt slightly lost, that is a perfectly reasonable reaction. The source text on legislation.gov.uk is dense, formal and full of cross-references. Once you slow it down, though, the picture becomes much clearer: this is a 2026 amendment to an earlier Scotland Act Order, and it is mainly about who can exercise certain forestry and tree health functions. According to the legislation text, the Order was made on 14 October 2026, laid before Parliament and the Scottish Parliament on 16 October 2026, and comes into force on 5 December 2026. Its full name is the Scotland Act 1998 (Specification of Functions and Transfer of Property etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026. That sounds forbidding, but your first takeaway is simple: this is not a brand-new forestry system. It is an update to an existing legal arrangement.

It also helps to know what kind of law you are looking at. This is a statutory instrument, which means secondary legislation. In everyday terms, Parliament has already passed the main Act, and ministers are now using a legal power inside that Act to adjust detail, administration or scope. The line saying the Order was made at Buckingham Palace by the King in Council is part of that formal route. It does not mean a new political decision about forests has suddenly come from the Palace. It means the government is using an Order in Council under section 93(3) of the Scotland Act 1998. **What this means:** when you see this style of drafting, you are usually looking at the machinery of government rather than a headline-grabbing policy launch.

The devolution point is the part most worth understanding. Section 93 of the Scotland Act allows certain functions of the Scottish Ministers to be exercised by a Minister of the Crown if arrangements are made. So this Order is not abolishing devolved powers, and it is not handing Scotland’s forestry system wholesale to Westminster. It is specifying which functions can sit within that shared administrative route. That may sound like a small distinction, but it matters. Devolution is often discussed as if powers are either fully kept or fully taken away. In practice, some areas work through carefully drafted cooperation. This Order sits in that space. It updates the 2019 list of functions so that forestry and plant health work can be handled more clearly where section 93 arrangements apply.

A large chunk of the amendment is about definitions, and that is not legal fussiness for the sake of it. The Order adds detailed meanings for terms such as “forestry material”, “forestry professional operator”, “tree”, “tree pest” and “wood packaging material”. In law, those definitions decide what the rules actually cover. The wording is broad on purpose. “Forestry material” includes wood that still has some or all of its natural round surface, as well as chips, particles, shavings, sawdust, wood waste, scrap, trees and detached bark. “Wood packaging material” covers wood or wood products used to support, protect or carry goods, including dunnage. “Forestry professional operator” is also defined widely, covering activities such as importing, moving, storing, aggregating, exporting, treating and marking forestry material in Scotland, as well as handling tree pests for testing, science, education, trials, varietal selection or breeding. If you are wondering why the law spells all this out, the answer is straightforward: clear definitions reduce arguments later about who and what falls inside the system.

The practical change comes in the functions being specified. The Order adds the Scottish Ministers’ functions under Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 on protective measures against pests of plants, Regulation (EU) 2017/625 on official controls, and the Plant Health (Official Controls and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Regulations 2019. It also adds any other function of the Scottish Ministers so far as it relates to monitoring and controlling tree pests, promoting tree health, moving forestry material, and regulating forestry professional operators. That is the legal centre of the amendment. **What this means:** the Order widens the list of forestry and plant health functions that can be exercised through section 93 arrangements. If tree pests, timber, bark, wood packaging or related controls move across administrative boundaries, the law now gives a clearer map of the powers involved.

The amendment also removes something. The explanatory note on legislation.gov.uk says the 2019 Order had referred to the Scottish Ministers’ functions under section 44 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, but that reference is now being taken out because there are no functions under section 44 that could be exercised by way of arrangements under section 93 of the Scotland Act 1998. This is a good reminder that not every legal change marks a fresh political argument. Sometimes an instrument is cleaning up the statute book so that the wording matches what the law can actually do. **What this means for you as a reader:** when you see a reference being removed, it is worth asking whether policy is changing or whether the drafting is simply being corrected. Here, the explanatory note points firmly to correction rather than a shift in forestry or climate policy.

The final clue to the scale of the change sits in the impact note. The explanatory material says no full impact assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. That suggests ministers see this as a technical but useful adjustment, not a sweeping reform that will reshape how forestry businesses or public bodies operate overnight. So, what should you keep from all this? From 5 December 2026, the law more clearly sets out which Scottish forestry and tree health functions can be exercised under section 93 arrangements, and it tightens the wording around the people, materials and pests covered by those rules. It is a neat example of how devolution often works in real life: not through grand constitutional drama every day, but through precise legal changes that decide who can act, in which area, and under which rules.