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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the number of trees that have been planted in England in (a) 2019, (b) 2020 and (c) 2021 to date.

The Forestry Commission produces statistics on all new planting of woodland for the UK. These Official Statistics are produced to meet the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics. The latest statistics can be found in Provisional Woodland Statistics: 2021 edition on the Forest Research website together with background information at Forestry Research . These statistics are reported for each financial year in thousands of hectares. The latest available figures are for 2020-21.

For all new planting of woodland in the most recent year, there is also a published estimate of the approximate number of trees this represents available from the Forestry Commission Key Performance Indicators. For 2020-21 this was an estimated 4,252,000 trees newly planted in England.

The areas of new planting (woodland creation) for England taken from the published Forestry Statistics are shown below:

Source: Forestry Commission, Forestry England, grant schemes and with estimates for areas planted without grant aid.

Note 1: ‘..’ denotes data not available. Estimates of numbers of trees in newly-planted woodland are incomplete for years before 2020-21.

Note 2: Estimates for areas planted without grant aid are believed to be under-reported and, as a result, the reported figures are likely to under-estimate the true level of planting activity. For England, woodland planting funded by sources other than the Countryside Stewardship Woodland Creation Grant, the Woodland Carbon Fund and the HS2 Woodland Fund include planting supported by the Woodland Trust, by the Environment Agency, by Natural England and land acquired by the National Forest Company.