Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to ensure that ancient woods and veteran trees are protected from development in planning policy.

The National Planning Policy Framework provides strong protection for irreplaceable habitats such as ancient woodland and veteran trees. In addition, on 7 February we published the Housing White Paper, Fixing our broken housing market. Through this we are consulting on placing our policy to include ancient woodland and veteran trees alongside other national policies which the Government regards as providing a strong reason to restrict development when preparing plans, or which indicate that development should be restricted when making decisions on planning applications. These policies include those on Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Green Belt, National Parks and designated heritage assets. The consultation closes on 2 May, and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/590464/Fixing_our_broken_housing_market_-_print_ready_version.pdf