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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made a recent assessment of the adequacy of her Department’s long-term financial support for the Great North Bog Project.

The Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMS) already pay for actions related to upland peat and moorlands, and we plan to extend the current offer including for new actions for restoring degraded peatland and maintaining restored peatland. The Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme – of which the Great North Bog is a recipient – has provided useful learning to inform ELMS, including for Landscape Recovery, which supports landscape-scale projects such as this.

As ELMS will provide the main delivery mechanism for peatland restoration from 2025, we are working with our peatland restoration delivery partners to enable a smooth transition for these partners whose work is invaluable in meeting our ambitious peatland restoration targets.