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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funding his Department has provided to Natural England’s National Landscapes programme in each year since 2015.

We are unable to provide detailed information prior to 2022 due to time/cost involved. Limited landscape designation work was delivered and funding for this was from Natural England’s baseline’ settlement.

Defra provided direct funding of £1.1 million per annum for years 2022/23 - 2024/25. As well as the four National Landscape designation cases, this covered wider work on landscape designations and alternatives.

For 2025/26 the direct funding for National Landscape designation work was not continued. Natural England is using baseline budget to fund a reduced programme of landscape designation work.