Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she has taken to reduce the potential impact of HS2 construction on ancient woodland.

A Phase One Ancient Woodland Strategy was published in 2017. It provided a full assessment for how building HS2 would affect ancient woodlands and details each individual woodland that was forecast to be impacted, based on the design at the time of submission of the hybrid Bill.

As the scheme has moved into detailed design and construction HS2 Ltd have sought to avoid or minimise the impacts of construction on sensitive ecological receptors like ancient woodlands, wherever practicable. The latest design data shows that the forecast impacts on ancient woodland are now 17.7 hectares. This is a 33% reduction on the 26.6 hectares of loss that had been expected in the HS2 Environmental Statement.

Where there are unavoidable impacts on ancient woodland, HS2 Ltd have implemented a range of compensatory measures including new woodland planting, enhancement of existing woodlands and a £5 million HS2 Woodland Fund to support third party landowners to deliver tree planting projects near the HS2 route. The Woodland Fund has successfully allocated all its funding and supported the creation of hundreds of hectares of new tree planting. It is therefore now closed to new applications.

Further information on HS2 Ltd’s approach to managing Ancient Woodland impacts, including annual summary reports, can be found here: www.gov.uk/government/publications/hs2-ancient-woodland-reports