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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken to increase the number of trees planted in (a) Lincolnshire and (b) the UK.

Forestry is a devolved matter and these figures apply to England only.

The Government remains committed to planting 11 million trees this parliament, and to the shared aspiration of reaching 12% woodland cover in England by 2060.

We have amended our main grant schemes to make applications easier by streamlining the application processes, opening the Countryside Stewardship Woodland Creation window all year round and reducing the threshold of applications from 30 hectares to 10 hectares for Woodland Carbon Fund applications. We have invested £5.7 million in the new Northern Forest; and announced a further £10 million for urban trees and £50 million for the Woodland Carbon Guarantee scheme.

We have planted approximately 16 million trees in England since 2010, of which approximately 437,000 have been planted across Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.