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

To ask His Majesty's Government how many of the 1.1 million trees planted in round 1 of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund have survived, what monitoring processes are in place to track the survival rate, and what estimate they have made of the cost per surviving tree.

The Green Recovery Challenge Fund (GRCF) was an £80 million fund over two rounds to support nature recovery and conservation across England between 2020 and 2023. It was developed by the last government in response to COVID-19 and administered on behalf of Defra by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF). Comprehensive independent evaluation reports for both rounds are available on the NLHF website.

GRCF projects were not required to undergo independent auditing or verification of outcomes. NLHF actively monitored all projects in delivery through quarterly reporting procedures, including meetings, site visits and photographic evidence. Grantees were required to undertake a project evaluation, commissioning external independent evaluation providers in most cases.

NLHF commissioned a separate independent programme level evaluation report for each round of GRCF. No instances of discrepancies or inflated reporting by grant recipients were identified.