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

To ask His Majesty's Government what support exists for farmers who are not claimants of the Basic Payment Scheme and who want to plant hedges and trees for the purpose of carbon sequestration.

There are several options available for farmers who are not claimants of the Basic Payment Scheme. Under the Countryside Stewardship (CS) Scheme, we pay for the management of hedgerows by rotational cutting and leaving some hedgerows uncut (BE3) and capital grants to plant and restore hedgerows. This includes hedgerow laying, hedgerow cropping and hedgerow gapping up.

We pay for actions to create woodland under CS and the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO). This includes capital grants which are required to create woodland, such as planting trees and allowing natural colonisation of trees. Producing woodland creation plans ensure all proposals for new woodland consider any impacts on existing biodiversity, landscape character, water, soil and the historic environment, and that local stakeholders have been consulted. Maintenance payments are also essential to support the establishment of young trees.

Woodland creation maintenance payments currently exist across multiple schemes including CS, EWCO and the Tree Health Pilot. We plan to bring these together into a single offer when EWCO transitions into the Environmental Land Management schemes. For Woodland management, under CS, we pay for producing a woodland management plan, woodland improvement and restoring plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites.

Farmers and land managers can also apply to get money for projects that support carbon sequestration via our Landscape Recovery Scheme.