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

To ask His Majesty's Government how many new trees have been planted as part of the Northern Forest project in each of the last three years.

The Northern Forest is an ambitious landscape scale partnership that aims to establish at least 50 million new trees by 2043 in and around the cities of Liverpool, Chester, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Hull. The government supports the Northern Forest as a contributor to levelling up by supporting new and existing jobs, rural economies, fighting climate change, facilitating nature recovery, and encouraging greater private investment in trees and woodlands. So far, the core partnership of the Woodland Trust, Mersey Forest, Manchester City of Trees, White Rose Forest and Humber Forest have established over 5 million new trees since 2018.

The Forestry Commission publishes information on new tree planting annually, including in the Northern Forest. These figures can be obtained from its Headline Key Performance Indicators reports, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/forestry-commission-corporate-plan-performance-indicators. The most recent published provisional statistics are shown below (and is attached):