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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many trees are planned to be planted in Hartlepool constituency in 2020.

To drive an unprecedented step-change in planting rates and help reach our net zero target we will invest in tree planting with a new Nature for Climate Fund (NCF). A significant proportion of the NCF will help support our commitment to plant 30,000 hectares of trees per year across the UK by 2025.

The Government’s support for woodland creation is predominantly through grant schemes and incentives, these include the recently launched Woodland Carbon Guarantee, in addition to the existing Countryside Stewardship, Woodland Carbon Fund, Woodland Creation Planning Grant and the Urban Tree Challenge Fund. These grants are available to local authorities, land managers and community led organisations wherever they are in the country. We do not have individual targets by constituency. We are working to increase the uptake of grant schemes and strongly encourage eligible organisations to do so.

The Government is consulting on ways to further incentivise land managers and owners to plant more trees. Later this year we will consult on a Tree Strategy for England, designed to set the Government’s future vision for the sector.