Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many licences for abstraction in chalk streams have been rescinded in each year since 2010.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
A total of 110 licences affecting chalk streams have been revoked since 2010. A further 158 have been varied or reduced.
The abstraction licence changes have returned over 37 billion litres of water per year to chalk catchments and prevented a further 110 billion litres per year being abstracted.
Number of abstraction licences, affecting chalk streams, that have been changed up to 30.09.23 | |||
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Year | Number of licences varied or reduced | Number of licences revoked | Total |
2010 | 7 | 0 | 7 |
2011 | 2 | 10 | 12 |
2012 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
2013 | 5 | 3 | 8 |
2014 | 14 | 6 | 20 |
2015 | 30 | 5 | 35 |
2016 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
2017 | 24 | 45 | 69 |
2018 | 43 | 16 | 59 |
2019 | 5 | 12 | 17 |
2020 | 9 | 5 | 14 |
2021 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
2022 | 1 | 1 | |
2023 | 10 | 3 | 13 |
Total | 158 | 110 | 268 |
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 18 January 2024 to Question 8421 on Tree Planting: Finance, for what reason the statistics for planting of trees in Forestry Commission Key Performance Indicators, updated on 9 August 2023 are provisional for 2022/23; what the changes are in the revisions of previous years in that release; and for what reason the statistics are released on an annual basis.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
New planting of woodland and trees in England is reported in statistics derived from returns from a number of contributors and range of grant types. After first release of the statistics, it is possible for more accurate data to become available hence the reason the statistics are described as provisional.
The Forestry Commission will normally make necessary revisions to new planting statistics when those figures next appear in any related publication including the Forestry Statistics report and its accompanying datasets, available from the Forest Research website at: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/forestry-statistics/.
A key reason that statistics on new planting are published annually is that there is one tree planting season a year. The Forestry Commission does publish interim statistics on new planting in England for the first half of the financial year where data are available at mid-year, and these are available in its Headline Performance Updates, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/forestry-commission-corporate-plan-performance-indicators.
The Forestry Commission seeks to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics published on the UK Statistics Authority website, available at https://code.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the Biodiversity Gain Site Register Regulations 2024 will come into force on 12 February 2024, in the context of their approval by both Houses in January 2024.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Biodiversity Gain Site Register (Financial Penalties and Fees) Regulations 2024 and The Biodiversity Gain (Town and Country Planning) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2024, which were both subject to the affirmative procedure, were laid before parliament on 30 November 2023 and following debates on 8 and 10 January 2024 they were formally approved by parliament. The final four statutory instruments, subject to the negative procedure, were then laid before parliament on Friday 19 January 2024. Following the usual parliamentary procedure of allowing 21 days between laying legislation and it coming into force, the new mandatory biodiversity net gain requirement will come into force for major development, subject to the confirmed exemptions and transitional arrangements, on 12 February 2024.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many trees have been planted in England in (a) 2020, (b) 2021,(c) 2022 and (d) 2023 using tax payer money.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Forestry Commission produces statistics on all new planting of woodland in England. These can be found in Forestry Commission Key Performance Indicators (opens in a new tab). These statistics are reported for each financial year in thousands of hectares. The latest available figures are for 2022-23.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2023 have been (a) made and (b) approved in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Sustainable Farming Incentive has a rolling application window and as of 9 January the Rural Payments Agency has received 36 applications of which 24 agreements have been offered and 17 accepted for the Suffolk Coastal Constituency.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many recipients of the Basic Payments Scheme there are in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
During the application window, which closed on 9 June, the Rural Payments Agency received 305 Eligible Basic Payments Scheme applications for the Suffolk Coastal Constituency.
As of 14th December the total number of BPS claims Paid for Suffolk Coastal constituency is 298 in total which is 97.07% paid.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much waste was collected in (a) household waste and (b) recycling centres in (i) 2019-20, (ii) 2020-21, (iii) 2021-22 and (iv) 2022-23 per waste authority.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Figures for Total Household waste by Local Authority for 2019/20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 can be found in Table 1 of the dataset published here.
Defra do not publish figures for total waste deposited at HWRC’s by Local Authority.
This information can be derived from WasteDataFlow Question level data published on Gov.uk for 2019/20, 2020-21 and 2021-22.
Data for 2022-23 will be published in 2024.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2023 have been (a) made and (b) approved in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Sustainable Farming Incentive has a rolling application window and as of 12 December the Rural Payments Agency had received 18 applications of which 9 agreements have been offered and 9 accepted for the Suffolk Coastal Constituency.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2023 have been (a) made and (b) approved in Suffolk Coastal constituency.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Sustainable Farming Incentive has a rolling application window and as of 23 November the RPA has received 12 applications of which 7 agreements have been offered and 6 accepted for the Suffolk Coastal Constituency.
Asked by: Thérèse Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, regarding SFI23, how many applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2023 offer have been (a) made and (b) approved.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) has a rolling application window and as of 16 November 2023, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) had received 2,737 SFI 23 applications. Of these, the RPA has issued offers of agreement to 1,589 farm businesses and 1,227 have been accepted.
The SFI23 application window opened in mid-September and there is a rolling window to apply which allows farm businesses to apply when they are ready to do so.