Concerns about the market impact of any widespread felling of mature ash trees to combat the disease have also been expressed.

An emergency summit on the disease led by environment minister Owen Paterson last week released results of Forestry Commission surveys on the disease spread, showing the outbreak had now also been confirmed in Sussex, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland, adding to earlier confirmations in Kent, Essex and East Anglia.

Last week also saw a government Cobra emergency response meeting called, wall-to-wall coverage from national newspapers on the disease and a ban on the import and movement of ash tree plants and trees.

Commercially, English ash is now more known for firewood then value-added wood products.

West Sussex-based sawmiller and timber merchant WL West & Sons Ltd, which remembers the ravages of Dutch elm disease on the English elms in the 1970s, said the ash disease spread was potentially disastrous.

It described English ash as a beautiful commercial timber, but the popularity and ease of supplying kiln-dried North American ash, which has the lion’s share of the UK ash timber market, meant demand for the former was now limited and confined to specialist work.
"I am very worried about the situation," said Simon Smith, joint managing director of WL West & Sons Ltd.

"The government is taking action after the horse has bolted. They’ve known about it for so long but have left it too late.

"We used to be very big in English ash about 10 years ago but it has become less popular in the furniture and joinery sector which is sad. Our indigenous species are thought to be poor cousins compared to imported woods."

A serious spread of Chalara ash dieback would, he added, lead to a scarcity of ash resources. The species’ lower durability compared with oak meant that if commercial use were to be made of infected trees/logs, these would need felling and processing quickly for the value to be retained.

Mr Smith added that any disease that affected any UK native species has to be of concern to the timber and forestry industry even if the species was not currently in vogue.

Tom Compton, managing director of sawmiller English Woodlands Timber, said there could be trade "implications" if the Forestry Commission decided to take more radical steps, like pre-emptive felling of healthy ash, to stop the disease’s spread.

"That would obviously have an impact for our woodland management, but also produce a lot of viable timber – and I believe this did happen in the US in their efforts to combat emerald ash borer," said Mr Compton.

"There are questions over whether remaining hardwood mills would have the capacity to handle this, then we’d also have to create a market for it."

The company’s main concern is its capacity as a woodland manager. Its ash production is limited to small amounts for flooring and other decorative applications, with its biggest ash customer using it to make yurts.

"Firewood is where the biggest demand is today, because ash is so easy to split and can be burned pretty much straight away," he said.

Stuart Goodall, chief executive of Confor, attended Wednesday’s summit after earlier calling for the government to allocate additional resources to fight destructive ash tree disease Chalara dieback, describing the Forestry Commission as "stretched beyond breaking point".

He said the commission faced a big task of surveying sites where diseased ash saplings had been planted.

"This amounts to several thousand sites and the Forestry Commission, which has suffered cuts of 25%, is struggling to achieve this before the autumn leaf fall," he said.

Mr Goodall also lamented the huge reduction in production of English ash wood products.
"We’ve lost much of our hardwood milling industry due to competition from imports," he said. "We also do not have a lot of the big mature, straight trees."

He said Confor had made efforts with the government to promote the use of ash, beech and oak and create markets for the species.