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 have been planted in England in the last five years.

The Forestry Commission produces statistics on all new planting of woodland for the UK. These can be found in Forestry Statistics and in Provisional Woodland Statistics: 2021 edition on the Forest Research website. 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 since 2020-21, there is also a published estimate of the approximate number of trees this represents available from the Forestry Commission Key Performance Indicators on the gov.uk website.

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

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

Planting rates in 2020/21 were impacted by Covid-19. The England Tree Action Plan published in May 2021 stated our aim to at least treble tree planting rates in England by end of this Parliament.

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 and the former English Woodland Creation Grant, the Woodland Carbon Fund and the High Speed 2 Woodland Fund, include planting supported by the Woodland Trust, the Environment Agency, Natural England, the National Forest Company, in the Northern Forest, and by the Community Forests.