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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions they are taking to increase the area of publicly accessible woodland for local communities in the light of the Woodland Trust's 2015 report <i>Residential Developments and Trees</i> which found that access to the natural environment can have benefits to health and well-being.

We recognise the benefits to health and well-being of people being able to access the natural environment and the role of publicly accessible woodland as part of that. In addition to maintaining the public forest estate, which is the largest open-access forest we have in this country, we are increasing the area of accessible woodland in a number of other ways.

For example, as part of our commitment to plant 11 million trees during this Parliament, the Forestry Commission recently launched the Woodland Carbon Fund, to help create new woodlands. This provides increased incentives where permissive access is granted by the landowner for 30 years, as well as support for recreational infrastructure.

We are also working with stakeholders to assess the quantity and quality of the public rights of way network within and alongside woodland, which may lead to improved access; planting a million trees in and around schools; championing the Urban Forestry and Woodland Advisory Committee’s ‘Vision for a Resilient Urban Forest’; and conducting research into the value and benefits of urban trees, like the iTree Eco UK project.