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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy that his Department's Woodland Access Implementation Plan extends the Right to Roam to woodlands.

Through the England Trees Action Plan, we committed to ensuring the provision of safe and appropriate public access as a feature of as many woodlands as possible and to work with landowners and woodland users to develop and implement a plan to improve the quantity, quality and permanency of public access to new and existing woodlands.

We do not currently plan to mandate new woodlands have public access or introduce a right to roam across all woodlands. We do plan to explore various other options from updating Forestry Commission guidance through to plans to encourage improvements to the quality and permanency of access using existing legislative means (i.e. the Public Rights of Way network). This will include how we might support greater access for all abilities and higher rights. We will also explore options to support landowners to consider access through our current voluntary grant offers, amending them to be more attractive for offering permanent access and making more areas eligible for support.

We are currently in the process of working with stakeholders to develop this Implementation Plan, identifying the policy, guidance, and behavioural changes needed to improve access to new and existing woodlands, which will feed into the development of the final plan.