A CALL for community 'guardians' to help protect the Forest were discussed at a hustings last Wednesday.

All four of the five parliamentary candidates except Mark Harper (Conservative), who declined his invitation by HOOF (Hands Off Our Forest), agreed that grass roots representation on management boards was vital.

Steve Parry-Hearn (Labour) said: "I don't think MPs should be involved, and that future management should have elected guardians such as HOOF, members of public stakeholder groups, and the Verderers. The people of the Forest should elect guardians – not the Minister of State."

James Greenwood (Green Party) added: "I don't trust senior forestry members to become guardians for our Public Forest Estate as they have their own agenda."

Chairman of HOOF, Rich Daniels agreed that guardians needed to be 'distanced from politics'.

He said: "At the moment the proposal by DEFRA/Government is that the public appointments process comes in to play. This effectively means that applicants for the role are selected by civil servants and then the final selection is made by the Secretary of State. So it's less elect, more select."

He added: "As we have not seen any proposals whatsoever for the 'powers' of the guardians it's difficult to say how much influence they could have on stopping possible privatisation. The DEFRA/ Government is at the moment proposing that the guardians have an advisory role only."

Among the packed audience was Jacqueline Baber of Newnham. She said: "What shocked me, however, was to realise that, irrespective of each candidates commitment to the welfare and preservation of the Forest of Dean, unless we come out of Europe there are already regulations and laws being implemented which give external powers autonomy to over-ride anything we might achieve.

"As my family roots stretch back 500 years into the Forest of Dean, and I'm passionate to preserve it, this is something that causes me concern because, if coming out of Europe is the only secure way of preserving the Forest, then surely we should be made aware of this?"

Among the other topics discussed were nuclear waste, affordable housing and leaseholds on private holdings.