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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Environmental Impact Assessment (Forestry) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 enable the Forestry Commission to reverse a decision on a tree planting project (a) that has been made incorrectly and (b) where previously withheld evidence has come to light; and if he will make a statement.

The Environmental Impact Assessment (Forestry) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 do not provide for Opinions or Assessments made by the Forestry Commissioners to be amended or repealed.

A proposer’s application for a relevant forestry project to the Forestry Commissioners for their Opinion, or the proposer’s Notification of the project, once assessed, may result in a decision that consent under the regulations is not required. This decision is based on evaluating all the evidence available at the time.

Where an assessment of a relevant forestry project results in a decision that consent under the regulations is required the applicant must provide an Environmental Statement before the project is determined.

An applicant for consent may appeal the decision where consent has been refused or additional conditions have been imposed. Anyone aggrieved by the granting of consent can make an application to the High Court to have the consent quashed in specific circumstances.

To help ensure that all relevant evidence is available when decisions are made on tree planting projects, the Forestry Commission has recently published a new Priority Habitat Identification Booklet, which makes clear the onus on developers of woodland creation proposals to identify priority habitats, is training staff on this, and is appointing three new ecologists who will help to ensure that biodiversity interests are identified. Natural England is also working with the Botanical Society of the British Isles and the Woodland Trust on a method which uses more up-to-date and comprehensive plant data to identify high-quality habitats to inform woodland planning decisions.