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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to measure the outcomes of the Environmental Improvement Plan.

The Environment Act’s statutory cycle of monitoring, planning and reporting ensures that government will take early, regular steps to achieve targets and can be held to account with regular scrutiny from the Office for Environmental Protection and Parliament. A key part of this cycle is the Annual Progress Report which describes what has been done to implement the Environmental Improvement Plan and considers whether the natural environment, or aspects of it, have improved over the reporting period. The latest APR was published on 20^th July 2022.

In addition to other sources, the Annual Progress report utilises data from the Outcome Indicator Framework for the 25 Year Environment Plan which is a suite of outcome indicators that measure changes to the environment. The 2023 annual update to the Outcome Indicator Framework was published on 22 May 2023 and provides the latest data on environmental trends.

The Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 is the first revision of the 25 Year Environment Plan. The Outcome Indicator Framework will be reviewed in 2024 to evaluate its ongoing suitability and consideration of best available evidence. This review will also consider the framework’s alignment with the planned monitoring of the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023.