Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing a requirement for power companies with powers to carry out resilience cutting without a tree-felling license to replace or minimise adverse impacts to adjacent residencies or businesses.

The Government is committed to increasing tree cover, which is why we have committed to raise planting rates to 30,000 hectares per year across the UK by the end of this parliament. Individual trees can provide important environmental benefits, but these benefits need to be balanced against people’s safety as well as security of electricity supply. For this reason, electricity operators may carry out or request felling without a licence where a tree is or will be in such close proximity to an electric line or electrical plant that it may impact on power distribution. Electricity operators may wish to consider compensatory planting if this does not have a negative impact on future operations.