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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is planning to take to help encourage (a) tree planting, (b) re-wilding and (c) wider planting in rural communities, including in Hitchin and Harpenden constituency.

Our England Trees Action Plan (ETAP), published in May 2021, sets out the long-term, generational vision for trees and forestry to 2050. It recognises the vital contribution trees can make, including to nature recovery, Net Zero, and health and wellbeing.

ETAP details how we will treble tree planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament, contributing to 30,000 hectares of new trees per year across the UK by 2025. The Plan is supported by the £675 million Nature for Climate Fund.

This includes launching the England Woodland Creation Offer with over £15 million available in this year alone to support woodland creation from as little as 1 hectare, in blocks of 0.1 hectares. The Offer includes funding for natural colonisation, which allows trees to seed and grow naturally next to existing trees.

The Government is continuing to support the creation and enhancement of wilder landscapes as part of our broader approach to nature recovery including, where appropriate, species reintroductions. However, we recognise that as an approach, rewilding is not appropriate in all situations, and is not the only means of delivering the Government’s environmental goals.

Locally we have supported a variety of tree planting and establishment projects including over £25 million for our Woodland Creation Partnerships this year, establishing three new Community Forests with over 1,000 hectares of new woodland being planted across the total 13 Community Forests since 2020, up to £4.4 million available to rural communities through the Local Authority Treescapes Fund, and launched the ground-breaking Woodland Creation Accelerator Fund, which will have a total value of just under £8 million to provide financial support to local authorities to increase their capacity and specialist skills.

The Forestry Commission estimates that there were at least 400,000 newly planted trees with Government support in woodland in the 12 years 3 months from 1 April 2010 to 30 June 2022, in the Hitchin and Harpenden constituency.