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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to offer incentives to small scale forestry schemes in future.

Woodland planting schemes supported by Countryside Stewardship (and earlier Rural Development Programme schemes) for planting in 2016-17 and 2017-18 have budget allocations of £3.3m and £8.3m respectively.

The Woodland Carbon Fund has a budget allocation of more than £19 million for the remainder of this Parliament.

The Woodland Creation Planning Grant’s budget allocation is drawn from the £1m Forestry Innovation Fund.

We have allocated up to £3.2m over 4 years to the Trees for Schools programme. This will give hundreds of thousands of children across England a chance to plant saplings in their school grounds and communities as part of a Government-backed scheme to give free trees to schools in partnership with the Woodland Trust.

Countryside Stewardship offers incentives for small scale woodland creation. The normal minimum application area is 3 hectares with a minimum block size of 0.5 hectares; or 1 hectare and 0.1 hectares where woodland creation is part of a suite of measures for water quality or flood prevention.

Countryside Stewardship also provides support for existing woodlands as small as 3 hectares, including preparing a woodland management plan and support a range of woodland management activities and capital items. Additional support is available for woodland tree health