Woodland Trust
Reviewing advocacy campaign effectiveness
In a nutshell…
A lessons learned review of advocacy campaigns relating to the UK Government’s HS2 scheme
The Woodland Trust is the UK’s largest woodland conservation charity, dedicated to protecting, restoring and creating native woodland. Since 1972, it has worked to ensure woods and trees thrive for people, wildlife and the climate. Today, the Trust cares for over 1,000 publicly accessible woods and leads national advocacy to strengthen environmental protections, supported by more than 500,000 members and supporters.
HS2 is the largest infrastructure scheme in the UK by value and, per mile, the world’s most expensive high‑speed rail project. The programme posed acute risks to ancient woodland, with over a hundred sites at one point facing potential direct or indirect impact. Following the cancellation of Phase 2 in October 2023 and continuing delivery of Phase 1, the Woodland Trust sought to capture lessons from more than a decade of advocacy – so successes could be “banked” and applied to other major infrastructure projects such as Northern Powerhouse Rail, strategic roads, and energy transmission
Over the period since HS2 was first proposed in 2009, the Woodland Trust invested significant time, effort and resources into advocacy work around the project, becoming known as an ardent, trusted, and critical voice on the project’s impacts on ancient woodland and veteran trees. Prior to HS2, the Trust also engaged with the HS1 project (now better known as the channel tunnel).
The Woodland Trust commissioned an independent review to identify, record and communicate key lessons from its HS2 advocacy across campaigns, external affairs, communications, and media activity. The review aimed to determine where influence was most effective (and why), what should change next time, and how the organisation could be more influential—preserving institutional knowledge for future teams and informing a set of practical recommendations.
Key learning questions included: What was the initial theory of change? Which factors were within the Trust’s control? Where did tactics succeed or fall short, and what combinations made the difference? Were the right issues prioritised and positions taken? What should be done differently next time?
Combining lessons learned on large scale transformation, behaviour change and organisational effectiveness experience and using our Associate pool to draw on external communications expertise, Optimo were appointed following a competitive bidding process. Our approach combined structured evidence review, stakeholder engagement, and practical, action‑oriented recommendations designed for adoption across future infrastructure campaigns.
We started by aligning on the review scope, outputs, and a standardised core question set for interviews so insights would be comparable and synthesis-ready.
We then examined internal Trust materials, campaign assets and evaluations, media mentions, parliamentary mentions and contact records alongside researching environmental advocacy best practice by other charities – building a consolidated evidence base of activity, context and outcomes.
The next step involved conducting semi‑structured interviews with a range of internal and external stakeholders, using the pre-agreed question set, and allowing for additional questions where relevant.
Throughout this discovery we traced key moments across the project and campaigns, linking tactics and conditions to outcomes (positive and negative) and identifying success factors, blind spots and points where flexibility mattered most.
Findings from the documentation and data audit, consolidated with interview outputs, were translated into an evidence-based findings and lessons learned report, addressing the Trust’s key learning questions and spotlighting success drivers and a set of practical standards, which were compiled into a checklist and guidance document for colleagues to use for future infrastructure projects and for staff training – for example early definition of a theory of change, internal team alignment and continuous evaluation and adaptation.
Once the final outputs had been reviewed, we facilitated a workshop with Trust colleagues to share findings, prioritise recommendations, surface implementation owners and timelines and create the detail of actions plans to implement improvements for new and future projects.
As a result of working with Optimo the Woodland Trust now has a single, accessible, shared narrative of pivotal moments, choices and outcomes, with evidence to guide future advocacy, mitigating knowledge loss from team changes and enabling faster onboarding. Recommendations provide a structured blueprint to influence route design and environmental standards on major schemes—so previous “wins” become the default, not the exception.
The outputs from this work will be shared amongst the Exec team for strategic decision-making as well as being used in day-to-day work.
“Optimo’s work provided us with a clear framework on where to improve our efforts, but equally where we got it right. Danielle and Sophie were a pleasure to work with – prompt and really engaged with the brief. I’d really recommend Optimo for future work in this space!
Do you need to undertake a lessons learned review?
If you’re facing similar challenges – doing great work but want to assess your progress and impact – let’s chat about how we can help.