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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is on target to meet its commitment to plant 11 million trees by 2020; and how many trees have been planted to date.

The Government remains committed to planting 11 million trees in this parliament.

The Forestry Commission collect and publish statistics on the area of Government supported new woodland planting in England. The latest report shows that by the end of December 2016 an estimated 1.39 million trees had been planted in this parliament creating 1,032 hectares of woodland. Government’s support for this woodland creation has been with funding from the Countryside Stewardship scheme and its predecessor the England Woodland Grant Scheme.

The most recent application window for the Countryside Stewardship Woodland Creation Grant closed on 1st March.

We launched the Woodland Carbon Fund, which opened on 10 November 2016 with a budget allocation of more than £19 million.

The Woodland Creation Planning Grant, drawn from the £1m Forestry Innovation Fund, is providing support to land managers to encourage the planting of larger woodlands.

We have allocated up to £3.2m over 4 years to the Trees for Schools programme. This will give hundreds of thousands of children across England a chance to plant saplings in their school grounds and communities as part of a Government-backed scheme to give free trees to schools in partnership with the Woodland Trust.

We have established an additional £5 million fund for tree and woodland measures, including woodland planting, as part of High Speed 2. This is in addition to the package of compensation already in place for ancient woodland lost during construction.