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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure continuity of funding for peatland restoration between the closure of the Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme and the full implementation of the Landscape Recovery Scheme.

The Government recognises the importance of England’s peatlands, and in our manifesto, we committed to expanding nature-rich habitats such as wetlands and peat bogs. This will contribute to ensuring nature’s recovery, one of Defra’s five priorities. We have ambitions to restore hundreds of thousands of hectares of peatlands across the country, and we are working to ensure that we have the most effective mechanisms in place to go further than we have before.

Peatland restoration is currently funded via the Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme. We will continue to work with partners, farmers and land managers to enable the delivery of peat restoration, supported by agri-environmental schemes that provide long-term funding to support restoration projects. We are providing advice and guidance to enable partners to transition to new funding arrangements.

Private finance will also be vital to meeting our peatland restoration ambitions. To support peatland restoration, the Government is implementing a range of policies that will mobilise private investment. These include working with the IUCN to attract investment through the Peatland Code.