Update on the 2010 review of FSC and PEFC

The forest certification schemes approved as 'Category A evidence' are reviewed biennially to ensure that they continue to provide evidence of compliance with the UK Government’s timber procurement policy. The 2010 review is ongoing and covers a full review of the schemes: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

CPET’s Technical Panel met in mid-May in Oxford to go through the documentation collated by CPET with support from FSC and PEFC and to provide the final scoring against each criterion.

As a part of the review of certification schemes, evidence of non-compliance submitted by stakeholders is also considered and CPET invited stakeholders to provide evidence of non-compliance by PEFC, FSC and their national schemes.

The consultation ended in May and CPET received a high number of stakeholder responses, especially related to the new criteria. This, combined with the increased number of criteria, meant that the allocated 2 days was not enough for the Technical Panel to go through the comments thoroughly and score both schemes against all criteria. The Technical Panel will therefore meet again in September to finalise the scoring.

CPET would like to thank all the stakeholders who provided comments on the performance of the schemes; your input is important and much appreciated. We will, over the coming months, go through all comments and consult the certification schemes where relevant in preparation for the Technical Panel meeting.

We expect to have the result of the 2010 Category A review in October.   

 For more details, see Methodology for reviews of timber certification schemes (March 2008).