United Kingdom
Due to a high number of stakeholder responses during the recent public consultation, the review of forest certification schemes approved as "Category A evidence" for UK public procurement has been delayed, CPET, the Central Point of Expertise on Timber, announced last week.
The two global forest certification schemes approved as 'Category A evidence', the two global forest certification schemes, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), are reviewed biennially by CPET to ensure that they continue to provide evidence of compliance with the UK Government's timber procurement policy.
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 expects to have the result of the 2010 Category A review in October.
