Natural Resources Wales facing £15m gap in budget

Natural Resources Wales is facing a potential £15m gap in its budget this year, the organisation's chief executive Clare Pillman has said.

The quango has seen its income from selling timber fall, and has lost cash from a fall in visitors and the stopping of events on their land such as rallies.

Ms Pillman said the organisation is making £8.8m in cuts.

The Welsh Government is providing an extra £5m to cover lost timber money.

It is to make up for timber sales that would have funded work at places such as Cwmcarn Forest Drive and Brechfa Forest.

NRW is also spending what it had left over from previous wood sales in reserves.

The organisation is Wales' largest quango. As well as being the country's environmental regulator, it also manages a large estate of forests, from which it sells timber to the private sector.

It is funded by the Welsh Government and its own income.

"We're operating in pretty unprecedented times," the chief executive told Senedd members, sitting virtually in a meeting of the environment committee held over the video conferencing app Zoom.

She said timber income had been "worst hit" and NRW's "visitor centre income has obviously disappeared during Covid, and we will take some time to get that back up and running".

"We've also lost revenue from things like rallies on our land and events on our land," she said.

"Our review of budgets identified cost pressures and loss of income, which may [have] meant that we had a £15m gap from where we began the year," she said.

"We have identified £8.8m worth of savings that we can make to cover that gap."

"With the additional £5m capital, we are now able to bridge that gap and come in with a sensible and realistic budget that we will put to the board next week."

She said the £8.8m in savings includes a reduction in NRW's land management budget, while some IT projects will be delayed and forestry operations will be reduced.

Natural Resources Wales is discussing with the Welsh Government whether it could keep more of the money it makes from wind farms to help with its financial problems due to the Covid-19 epidemic.

It currently keeps around £3m a year from managing and operating windfarms and returns £8m to the Welsh Government.

"Whether there's any appetite to enable us, perhaps, to keep that in future, that's something we're discussing with them," she told Senedd members.