Frequently Asked Questions

We are Friends of Goit Stock Wood. We are a community group and registered charity formed of residents local to Goit Stock Wood in West Yorkshire, UK. Read more about us.

Yes, we are a Charitable Incoroporated Organisation, a type of registered charity. We are registered with the Charity Commission, the government body that regulates charities in England and Wales, and we have to abide by their rules. Our registered charity number is 1213780.

You can search for our charity number or name using https://www.gov.uk/find-charity-information which will take you to this page.

You can read more about our charity and see our constitution on our About Us page.

Email contact@goitstock.org.uk or use this form. 

Goit Stock Wood is a 70-acre area of ancient woodland which has two becks (large streams) flowing through it, and several substantial waterfalls. It is home to a wide variety of plant and animal species, both on the land and in the water. 

It is open access land and is open 24/7 and is accessible on foot using the public footpaths through the wood. It is, and has been for over a century, a popular spot to visit, for walking and to look at and enjoy spending time with nature. 

We want to maintain the wood and ensure that visitors can enjoy it for centuries to come.

See this page for details.

No, not at present. The wood is currently owned privately, although it is accessible to the public via the footpaths and public rights of way through the wood. We are hoping to buy the wood so it can be maintained for the benefit of the community, but at the moment we have no official connection with the wood or its current owners.

Currently, the wood is private land. While it is open access and common land - so the public are allowed to access it - the fact that it is privately owned has various drawbacks. By placing the woodland in public ownership we hope to:

• preserve and protect the woodland and secure public access for generations to come, and provide a facility that individuals and community groups can use for enjoyment, leisure and exercise, enhancing physical and mental health

• provide opportunities to engage local residents in volunteering and caring for the woodland

• manage the wood and the beck in such a way as to enhance biodiversity - making healthy habitats for a wide variety of plant and animal life, both on the land and in the water - and making sure that it is looked after for years to come

• engage and educate visitors about nature and the importance of looking after it

For more information, see our vision, mission and values.

The wood is not owned by Bradford Council; it has always been in private ownership. It is currently owned by the owners of the Harden Park Homes site. 

Bradford Council, like all councils, are currently facing severe funding pressures that would prevent them from buying the wood. (Although they have provided us with a small grant of £100 from Shipley Community Chest funding to support our start-up and publicity costs).

Harden, Wilsden and Cullingworth Village/Parish councils also do not have funds available to buy the wood. Harden Village Council have supported us in non-financial ways and we are keeping in touch with all the village councils regularly about the project.

This is a question we get asked a lot - and the short answer is: it’s not as much of an issue as you might think.

All outdoor public spaces come with some level of risk. But UK law generally recognises that people using natural spaces are responsible for their own safety. If someone behaves irresponsibly and injures themselves, the landowner is unlikely to be held liable.

We’ve spoken to insurers, and they’ve confirmed that the liability risks for a woodland like this are not particularly high. As a result, the cost of public liability insurance is expected to be reasonable and affordable.

In brief, our plan is to raise funds from the community (local individuals and local businesses, plus grants and anyone else who will donate!), and purchase the wood. The wood would be owned by the charity, Friends of Goit Stock Wood, which has been set up as a separate legal entity which can own the wood in perpetuity, potentially for hundreds of years - certainly long after any of us are gone! (Read more about our charity structure in the answer to "How are you governed?" below).

We then hope to maintain and manage the wood in order to enhance biodiversity, and educate the public about looking after it, in line with our vision.

Goit Stock Wood has been in private hands for centuries, and it has been a long time since it was last up for sale, so if the community don't buy it now we might miss our chance for a generation or more. 

Goit Stock Wood was registered as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) in March. This gives the community a period of six months to put together a bid to buy the wood, during which time it can’t be sold to another bidder (though the vendor is under no obligation to sell to the community group). The ACV deadline is towards the end of September, so we need to get together as much money as possible before 12 September so we can put together a strong bid for the wood.

The list price of the wood is £195,000, though of course we hope that might be negotiable. There will also be legal and other fees to pay, plus costs involved in fundraising, and then we'll need funding to maintain the wood once we've bought it.

We will raise the money through a combination of:

• donations from local residents, visitors and people who love the wood (please donate!)

• Gift Aid on private donations

• fundraising activities such as events in the local community

• sponsorship and donation from businesses

• grant funding

• possibly, larger donations from philanthropists

If you are aware of other sources of funding we should consider, or can help with any of the above, please contact us.

The woodland could be sold to a private buyer - and no one can guarantee what their intentions might be.

While the land isn’t ideal for development (it's mostly a steep-sided valley), and there are some protections like public rights of way, ancient woodland status, and common land registration, these don’t prevent all forms of damage. A private owner could, for example, fell trees for timber or carry out other activities to exploit the land that harm the environment. They would have no obligation to manage the woodland for long-term health - things like controlling invasive species or promoting biodiversity - unless legally required, and enforcement of such duties is often difficult in practice.

Even basic responsibilities, like maintaining public footpaths, are not always upheld by private landowners.

By contrast, Friends of Goit Stock Wood is a community-led registered charity, set up specifically to care for the woodland now and into the future. We are a Charitable Incorporated Organisation - a legal structure designed to outlive any individual trustee. Our trustees are legally bound to act in the charity’s best interests, with the long-term care of the woodland as our core purpose, would be the best custodians of the woodland for generations to come. We believe the best way to protect Goit Stock Wood is for the community to own it.

We would love to hear from anyone who might be able to help with our project team - whether that's with fundraising, PR, or some special skills (maybe you're a solicitor or an accountant who could help us - or maybe you're just a keen and enthusiastic volunteer?). If that's you, please Contact us.

To keep updated about opportunities to help, sign up to our email newsletter.

We are a form of charity called a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). A CIO is a bit like a limited company in as much as it is its own separate legal entity. That means the CIO can enter contracts and own assets (including land) in its own right, and they are legally separate from the trustees' assets. A CIO is unlike a limited company in that it does not have shareholders. The trustees are the "guardians" of the CIO but they don't own it. The trustees are legally bound to act in the organisation's best interests.

Trustees can of course be replaced (and in future we may decide to appoint more than our current five trustees), which means that Friends of Goit Stock Wood has been set up so it can outlive the current trustees and it could be around for hundreds of years to come! (If you would be interested in becoming a trustee, please contact us).

As a registered charity we are regulated by the Charity Commission for England and Wales. You can find out a lot more about the Charity Commission and the rules we have to follow on the gov.uk website.

Friends of Goit Stock Wood has no paid staff. All our trustees are volunteers and we have more volunteers that help us with other activities such as fundraising. We have kept our administration costs to the bare minimum because we want as much money as possible to go into the wood (our trustees have funded a lot of our administration expenses out of their own pockets!). We don't use paid fundraisers.

No, donors wouldn't own shares in the wood. The wood would be owned by the charity and managed by the charity for the benefit of the local community. The charity will consult with and engage the local community - and require volunteers to help - with ongoing management - and you might be able to become a trustee of the charity if you wanted to.

The charity approach has several advantages:

• The charity is it's own legal entity, which can potentially exist for hundreds of years, long after any of us are gone. This fits with our vision of protecting the wood for future generations.

• As a charity, we can claim Gift Aid on donations from UK taxpayers. This is huge as it is effectively 25% match funding from the government for most donations from individuals. If we were a company (e.g. Community Interest Company (CIC)) this would not be possible.

• Charities are also exempt from Stamp Duty Land Tax on purchases of land.

• The wood would have one owner - the charity. The trustees of the charity - together with the community - can decide how to manage the wood. The charity's objects - which the trustees are held to by the Charity Commission - govern what the charity can do. This avoids the need for "shareholders" to decide how to manage the wood; the complexities of managing individual shares; transfers of ownership; inheritance issues and so on.

Yes please! Donate now here or read about ways to donate.

We can now claim Gift Aid on your donations too, so please tick the Gift Aid box if you are eligible. 

Our charity's purposes (objects) are to support the conservation and protection of Goit Stock Wood and to educate the public about the conservation of Goit Stock Wood. We can do this even if we don't own the wood, so if we can't buy the wood we would try to work with whoever does own the wood to help maintain the wood and ensure it is open for the public to enjoy.

If you want to give us a donation that can only be used to fund the purchase of the wood (and refunded to you if we can't go ahead) you can do so here.

A scheme that allows charities recognised by HMRC to recover some of the tax paid by taxpayers who donate to the charity. It allows charities to claim back 25p for every £1 donated by eligible donors. For more information  and to find out if you are eligible for Gift Aid (most people who pay tax in the UK are) see the gov.uk website.

When you donate through our website, individuals can pay by either credit/debit card or bank transfer. We can also accept donations by cheque through the post if you prefer.

We ask that business donations and business sponsorships are to be paid by bank transfer only (that way we can send you a proper invoice, and business credit/debit cards have higher processing fees, which would reduce the value of your donation).

Bank transfer is the easiest way to ensure that 100% of what you give goes to us, as we don't have to pay any fees to process a bank transfer. But we realise that credit/debit card donations are convenient and so we provide that option for individuals. If you are donating a larger amount, please consider using bank transfer to help us minimise the payment fees. 

Our online card donations are securely processed by either Square or SumUp. Both Square and SumUp are leading providers of online payment services and they take care of securing all transactions in line with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for us. When you donate through them, we do not get access to any of your card details as these are sent directly to their servers over a secure connection.

Square and SumUp both accept all major credit/debit cards including Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

(In some cases, we might pay a higher fee to process AmEx, so Visa and Mastercard are preferred).

No. But we do have a donation website and crowdfunding campaign.

JustGiving, Crowdfunder, GoFundMe and similar sites are run as commercial for-profit businesses. Mostly they say they don't charge charities fees, but they cheekily ask donors for an extortionate "tip" (sometimes up to 20% of the donation!) from which they make huge profits (JustGiving reported profits of over £29 million in 2023). This means less of what the donor pays ends up going to the charity.

To keep our costs down, we built our own straightforward donation website (one of our trustees is a software engineer!) which is hosted for us for free by Microsoft, and we use Square or SumUp to process the payments. Square and SumUp charge us relatively low fees to process card payments, but if you want to avoid this entirely and ensure we get 100% of your donation, you can donate to us by bank transfer instead. (Actually, if you make a Gift Aid declaration too, we'll get 125% of your donation!)

If you would like to fundraise for us and have your own sponsorship page similar to JustGiving, we may be able to set this up - please email support@goitstock.org.uk and we can look into this for you.

On our home page, we show a visual guide to how many weeks we have left and how far away we are from our fundraising target. We have simplified the target to £195,000, as that is the asking price of the wood, and it is in the ballpark of what we think we need to raise to make a successful offer.

Please note that this is a visual aid only and the graph is not to an exact scale. We do not want to publish an exact total of our fundraising to date online because this could affect our negotiating position when it comes to make an offer for the woods. If you were buying a house and you are trying to make an offer, you're not going to let the vendor know exactly how much cash you have in the bank because it might affect their willingness to accept any offer you make; the same principle applies here.

Also, just like with buying a house, we will need to keep some funds back to cover the costs of the purchase itself (conveyancing, stamp duty land tax, etc), plus the costs we'd face immediately after the purchase (such as insurance).

If you are considering making a larger donation and want more details to help figure out the size of your donation, please email us (contact@goitstock.org.uk) and we can discuss further.

Also, please note that the number of donors shown on the home page is an estimate. This is because we have received some anonymous donations (e.g. in collection boxes at events) and we have estimated the approximate number of individual donors based on this.