Environment Protection: Employment

(asked on 18th October 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent estimate he has made of the number of jobs that (a) have been or (b) will be retained as a result of (i) UK private, (ii) Government and (c) inward investment as part of the Government’s plans to protect the natural environment between November 2020 and November 2030.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 26th October 2021

The Government's Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution is mobilising significant investment in protecting the natural environment in England over the coming years. This will create and retain a range of green jobs while safeguarding our cherished landscapes and restoring habitats for wildlife in order to combat biodiversity loss and adapt to climate change.

As part of this, the £80 million Green Recovery Challenge Fund (GRCF) has already attracted £17.6 million in match funding across 159 projects and will create and retain around 2,500 jobs. The Government's £5.2 billion flood defence investment programme will create approximately 2,000 jobs over the duration of the programme (April 2021 - March 2027) with private sector delivery partners involved in flood defence scheme design and construction.

The England Trees Action Plan committed to treble tree planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament, supported by over £500m from the Nature for Climate Fund. In the recently launched Net Zero Strategy, the Government has also announced that it will boost the Nature for Climate fund with a further £124 million of new money, ensuring total spend of more than £750 million by 2025 on peat restoration, woodland creation and management – above and beyond what was promised in the manifesto. This funding, along with increased private investment, will help to support up to 1,900 jobs by 2024 and 2,000 jobs by 2030 in new woodland creation, harvesting and restocking. It will also support additional jobs in tourism, seed supply and local farming.

The England Peat Action Plan includes a commitment to invest over £50 million of the Nature for Climate Fund to restore approximately 35,000ha of peatland by 2025, which will create or retain approximately 600 jobs.

This is a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

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