Broads Authority's pioneering plan to extend commercial reed beds

The Broads Authority has announced a pioneering plan to increase the area of Broads reed beds used for commercial cutting in order to address the decline in this ancient industry.

Currently there are just 19 commercial reed cutters on the Broads. Now the Authority is to survey all Broads reed beds with a view to extending the areas cut and bringing neglected beds back into production.

Andrea Kelly, the Authority’s senior ecologist, said: “We know there are almost 2000 hectares of open fen on the Broads and, with the help of landowners, our aim is to extend commercial reed beds from 15% to 25%.

“We all know the government is expecting society to find other ways to pay for conservation management. This plan will help to put land management on a sustainable footing.”

She said landowners, who would still have a duty to manage protected sites had already been very positive about the initiative and were beginning to employ the local cutters to undertake all sorts of wetland work.

The Broads Authority has already trained new reed cutters through a Heritage Lottery funded scheme and addressed the issue of availability of work by providing them with scrub clearance contracts outside the cutting season.  Efforts will also be made to expand the market by looking for opportunities to sell lower-grade reed for thatching outbuildings.

Gary Elliott, 43, a reed cutter for 20 years, has been appointed to carry out the reed bed survey.  He will be contacting about 60 landowners and visiting sites around the Broads to assess the quantity and quality of reed.

He will be checking the viability of sites for expansion, looking at issues such as access and how easy it would be to remove the reed. On reed beds which have partly turned to scrub, he will be estimating how costly it would be to restore them to a commercial quality.

 Mr Elliott said: “We can see a future for living and working on the Broads now whereas before there did not appear to be any future.”

He said while 75% of reed is currently imported from places as far afield as China and the Ukraine, there is “quality assurance” in the case of reed cut locally.

“There is a link between the cutter, thatcher and householder. Sometimes we might be supplying reed to a house in our village so we are not going to be giving them poor quality reed,” he said.

His optimism is shared by Paul Eldridge, 31, and Rowan Nichols, 29, who represent a new breed of reed cutters having entered the industry five years ago on the Broads Authority’s training scheme.

Mr Eldridge said: “Every thatcher we have supplied was previously having to import reed and they are very excited to have English reed again. Their customers are also delighted to find that the reed has been cut locally.”

Broads Reed and Sedge Cutters Association chairman Richard Starling, 60, praised the Broads Authority’s new initiative which he saw as a way of “reconnecting conservation with sustainable management again”.

He said: “At the moment, thatchers have little choice but to use imported reed owing to the limited availability of UK reed. Sadly, traditional and sustainable reed bed management ceased on many sites in favour of rotational cutting and burning.
“Other issues impacting on production include access problems, changing water level regimes, the widening of dykes resulting in excessive areas of spoil and scrub encroachment.”

 “There are several thousand hectares of reed beds throughout the UK but I understand that it is only in the Broads where there is a desire to encourage further commercial participation in reed bed management. If other parts of the country followed the Broads Authority’s lead we would be less reliant on imported reed. “