The forestry panel's deadline for views is Sunday

There are just two days to go to let the Government-appointed group looking at the future of England’s forests know your views.

The closing date for submissions to the Independent Panel on Forestry is 31 July.

The panel, headed by the Bishop of Liverpool, was set up by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman after a huge public outcry at the proposed sell-off of public forest land by the coalition Government.

The panel membership includes Ramblers’ chief executive Tom Franklin.

More than 33,000 responses were received via the campaigning website 38 Degrees alone. The British Mountaineering Council has also posted a submission.

The BMC said woods and forests should be accessible and provide well balanced and well managed landscapes offering multiple public benefits: access, biodiversity, landscape conservation and sustainable forest management practices.

The council said: “The BMC recommends that where current access provision through our woods and forests is not safeguarded in law, dedication through the Countryside and Rights of Way Act is sought, as has been the case with all of the BMC’s and the Forestry Commission’s own land holdings.

“In particular, the challenge must be the ways in which national policy and appropriate delivery mechanisms can safeguard and improve access alongside biodiversity targets. This must be examined across public and privately owned woodland and forests throughout England.”

York Central MP Hugh Bayley, who organised a victory ramble through Dalby Forest in March to celebrate the Government’s u-turn, said the public forest estate should be expanded rather than sold off.

He said: “I do not accept the idea that only some forests will be left in public ownership or that some access rights will apply to land that is sold off.

“We need public forests to set high standards of biodiversity and public access, to show private forest owners what a well managed forest can achieve. Forestry Commission land is special and should be protected, because Forestry Commission foresters guarantee standards that are not generally provided in privately owned forests.

“The overall policy should be to expand the public forest estate each year.

“The Government’s climbdown in February shows that campaigning does work. The Government cannot ignore the voices from below. I have written to more than 400 people who contacted me to complain about the Government’s plans to sell public forests to remind them to respond to the panel before the deadline of 31 July and hope that people in York and throughout the country who care about the future of our public forests will join me in submitting their views to the panel, so that the panel knows how much public forests mean to them.”

Details of how to make a submission are on the Independent Forestry Panel’s website.