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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the (a) number of commercial tree nurseries and (b) the average number of trees grown by nurseries.

The Forestry Commission publishes a list of Forest Reproductive Material suppliers as required by the Forest Reproductive Material (Great Britain) Regulations 2002. This is available on our GOV.UK site at: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2195c92a086c4146972848c5190c9647/. This list covers forestry producers and does not represent the whole commercial nursery sector.

Nursery production capacity is commercially sensitive information and for this reason there are no official estimates. However, Confor, a representative body of the timber and forestry industry, has provided estimates for nursery production capacity in 2020. The summary findings of the Confor Nursery Producers Group are available at: https://www.confor.org.uk/media/247662/sftt-ne-nursery-perspective.pdf.