Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to plant trees alongside roads.

The Department is not currently taking any specific steps with regards to tree planting as this a matter for National Highways and local highway authorities (for the strategic road network and local roads respectively).

The Department does, however, encourage local highway authorities to recognise the contribution that trees make to the economic, social and environmental well-being of communities, while National Highways is, as part of its efforts to deliver on environmental goals and achieve Net Zero Targets, aiming to plant at least 3 million trees by 2030 (in addition to the trees planted as ‘essential mitigation’ for projects) to provide landscape and biodiversity benefits and help lock up carbon.