The UK’s dependence on timber imports for more than 80 per cent of its annual wood supply must be formally declared a national security risk, a new report launched in the House of Commons has warned. That is according to Confor, the Confederation of Forest Industries, which has released a cross-government policy brief — Timber: An Issue of National Security and Economic Resilience — calling on Westminster to treat timber alongside food and energy as a strategic national material.
The launch follows a rare joint declaration by the Forestry Commission and Natural England, which united to warn that domestic timber shortages constitute a matter of national security — lending institutional weight to an argument Confor has now taken directly to Parliament.
The report argues that the UK’s structural reliance on imports exposes housing delivery, critical infrastructure, and the low-carbon construction agenda to geopolitical disruption, price volatility, and constrained supply. Productive forest areas in England are declining. Woodland creation across the UK is falling short of government targets.
Confor is making five recommendations to the government: formally including timber supply metrics within the National Security Risk Assessment; establishing a cross-government Timber Security Taskforce reporting to the Cabinet Office; providing Treasury-backed 20-year certainty for productive woodland incentives; designating wood processing within the Industrial Strategy as strategic manufacturing; and committing to annual public reporting on import dependency and domestic capacity.
Ben Lake MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Forestry and Timber Security, backed the push. “Timber is not just a rural or environmental issue. It is a strategic material that underpins housing, infrastructure and economic resilience across the UK,” he said, adding that strengthening domestic forestry and processing capacity would help protect supply chains, support rural economies and improve preparedness for future global shocks.
The report draws on the COVID-19 pandemic as evidence of what structural vulnerability looks like in practice. When global timber supply chains collapsed under pandemic pressure, structural timber costs in some European markets rose by more than 60 per cent within a year, delaying projects and driving up costs across UK construction. Domestic production provided what Confor calls a stabilising buffer — and the brief argues that without sovereign production capability, disruption to housing and infrastructure delivery would have been significantly worse.
The brief identifies Russia as the only major untapped global timber reserve — a source the UK cannot rely upon for geopolitical reasons. Canada, a historic supplier, has experienced widespread forest losses due to beetle infestations. China, by contrast, has spent three decades expanding its own plantation estate specifically to reduce strategic exposure, and is now the world’s largest timber importer by value.
Stuart Goodall, chief executive of Confor, said the 81 per cent import figure should not be read as a trade statistic. “It is a structural strategic vulnerability,” he said, arguing that housing delivery, construction and the low-carbon economy all depend on timber supply, and that a housing strategy reliant on imported structural timber is not a resilient one.
The sector already supports more than 90,000 jobs across the supply chain and contributes £3 billion annually to the UK economy, anchored in around 180 sawmills and primary processing facilities — most of them in rural regions where alternative high-value manufacturing is limited. Each processing job supports additional roles in harvesting, haulage, nurseries and downstream construction, creating significant local economic multipliers that Confor argues Westminster has consistently undervalued.
