Meeting UK government procurement policy and EU Timber Regulation

One important question is whether legality verification systems and NGO initiatives meet requirements of the public procurement policies represented by the UK Government’s policy and of the EU Timber Regulation.

UK Government procurement policy

The UK policy requires Legality and Sustainability. However, where a particular type of product or timber species is required and where there is no sustainable timber or FLEGT-licensed timber or alternative available, timber which can be verified to meet the UK government requirements for legality will be accepted. Voluntary legality verification systems can therefore play an important role in ensuring legality and ensuring compliance with the UK government’s timber procurement policy but only where no sustainable source is available. The UK’s policy requires compliance with legislation related to forest management, environment, labour and welfare, health and safety, which, as outlined under Defining Legality, is not delivered by the Verified Legal Origin level and the VLO standards from SGS and SmartWood. Only voluntary legality verification systems ensuring full legal compliance as delivered by the VLC definition will be accepted.

Please note that FSC Controlled Wood is not ‘FSC certification’ on its own but a system developed for the trade to ensure that the non-certified portion in a mixed products do not come from ‘unwanted sources’. Therefore, it should not be accepted as ensuring compliance with the UK government’s timber procurement policy.

EU Timber Regulation

The EU Timber Regulation does not currently pre-approve specific legality verification or forest certification schemes to meet its requirements, though it mentions ‘assurance of compliance with applicable legislation, which may include certification or other third-party-verified schemes which cover compliance with applicable legislation’. The due diligence system, which needs to be applied by operators, will assess the level of risk associated with the trade of a specific timber product. Therefore, voluntary legality verification systems that verify legal compliance in the country of harvest are likely to be low risk as they cover applicable laws on right to harvest, payments for harvest rights and other duties, forest management and environmental legislation, third parties’ legal rights, trade and customs legislation. Additional information is required for systems which verify legal origin only, as to ensure that it meets all relevant laws covered under the legislation. In addition, OLB allows mixing of other acceptable materials such as other legally verified timber and those under the suppliers’ assessment programme. The suppliers’ assessment programme is a second party audit and there is no guarantee that the assessors have the required skills or experience to carry out the check on its suppliers. It is less credible than those that are verified independently. Therefore, OLB verified products containing timber from the suppliers assessment programme require further investigation to verify legal compliance.

All NGO initiatives such as SmartStep, GFTN, TFF and TTAP (run by TFT) can support suppliers in meeting the EU Timber Regulation as participants enrolled in these programmes have to undergo baseline assessment of legality and have to demonstrate that they are working towards achieving forest certification. However, members are potentially only in transition to legality and sustainability, and there is no requirement for independent verification of legality of participants. Hence, there is no guarantee that they meet all aspects of legality as defined under the Regulation.

Please refer to the EU Timber Regulation section here, for further up-to-date details on the regulation.