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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding in the Forestry Commission report Sustainable construction timber: sourcing and specifying local timber, published in 2016, that “timber-framed construction currently accounts for 75 per cent of new housing in Scotland, while the comparable figure for the UK as a whole is 25 per cent”; and what steps they intend to take in response.

No such assessment has been made.

The Net Zero Strategy and England Trees Action Plan committed to increase the use of timber in construction, and we encourage the use of timber in construction when safe to do so, as it can reduce the embodied carbon of a building. In the England Trees Action Plan, we committed to supporting timber in construction by providing up to £1.5m of support to develop innovative timber products through the Forestry Innovation Fund. We are also working to increase public demand for sustainably sourced domestic timber through timber procurement policies and encouraging research into barriers to uptake of timber, including looking at timber strength grades and the fire resistance of engineered timber structures.