Paul von der Heyde, Chairman of the British Furniture Confederation said "we do not seek any advantage for ourselves, only a level playing field. However, with the current subsidies granted to the power generation industry there is clearly a damaging imbalance. This undermines our industry and many others who create value and employment  from a limited timber resource, as opposed to those who simply burn it."

British Furniture Manufacturing generates £7.3bn of GDP (almost 3% of Britain’s manufacturing output).  It is now suffering an extraordinary increase in the cost of its prime raw material as a consequence of the poorly thought through woody biomass subsidies paid to energy producers.