Tree Planting and Woodlands

We welcome the UK Government’s ambition to plant 30,000 hectares of new woodland a year by 2025 in the UK. However, the Government has not set a clear target for England’s contribution, which will likely require England to treble its planting rate by May 2024. Setting annual targets for tree planting in England would provide certainty for the sectors whilst improving transparency and accountability. We recommend that, by May 2022, the UK Government should set clear, annual targets for England’s contribution to reaching the overall UK goal for planting of 30,000 hectares of trees a year by 2024.

The Government’s planting ambition will fail to achieve its net zero, nature recovery and biodiversity goals unless it is able to deliver the principle of planting the ‘right tree in the right place’. This requires adequate mapping data available being available to inform planting decisions. Currently there is no clear delivery date to work by the Forestry Commission and Natural England to fill gaps in their data, or for the work on the new national habitat map and Local Nature Recovery Areas (LNRS). We recommend that, by May 2022, Defra, the Forestry Commission and Natural England set out a plan for completing the data mapping work needed to allow it to ensure trees are not planted in locations where they will damage the environment.

However additional mapping information will not, in itself, help local authorities manage the potential trade-offs between tree planting, creating and conserving other habitats and the needs of farmers and food production when developing Local Nature Recovery Strategies. We therefore recommend that the Government produces more comprehensive guidance for local authorities to help them manage and make decisions about competing priorities for land use when creating their Local Nature Recovery Strategies.

The financial incentives the Government is providing must make it economically viable to plant trees. The overall direction of travel is laudable, and the interim English Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) provides better incentives than previous schemes. However, getting to net zero may be held up by a lack of progress and clarity on the Government’s Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes, and how the EWCO and ELM schemes will fit together. We recommend that Defra and the Forestry Commission urgently prioritise the publication of a clear and detailed timeline for the introduction of the ELM schemes, including how the EWCO and ELM schemes will fit together, by May 2022. It is essential that Defra does this promptly give farmers and others the certainty they need to kickstart planting. By September 2022, Defra should also publish and invite comments on its modelling that underpins the new incentives regime for tree planting.

Much of England’s existing woodland is under-managed and in poor condition. The Government’s objectives for net zero, nature recovery and biodiversity depend on existing woodland being much better managed. This will only happen if effective 40 Tree planting financial incentives are in place, but the Government’s has missed an opportunity with its new incentives to change the model for woodland management, by leaving a gap between when subsidies end, after ten years, and the start of income generation after around 20 years. We recommend that Defra and the Forestry Commission review the length of the maintenance payment and, if they decide to keep it unchanged, provide further information and guidance on what forms of additional private finance and economic opportunities landowners should seek to bridge the funding gap.

The Minister told us that the £500m allocated by the Government to woodland creation and management from 2020 to 2025 wouldn’t be enough to realise the Government ambitions, and it is not clear whether the extra funding committed in the Spending Review will fill the gaps identified by the Minister. Defra needs to clearly set out what it can achieve with the current funding allocated to woodland creation and management, and what the gap is between this and the Government’s ambitions. Defra, HM Treasury and the sector should work together to create a plan to fill any funding gaps to secure the level of funding required to support a robust woodland creation contribution to reaching net zero.

Increasing domestic timber production and consumption can provide an additional revenue stream to support tree-planting, whilst helping to store carbon and reduce the UK’s reliance on timber imports, which contributes to overseas deforestation. While we welcome the steps the Government is taking to boost domestic production and increase the use of wood in construction, progress to date has been very limited. We therefore recommend Defra and BEIS publish, by September 2022, an action plan to increase the use of domestically grown timber in the UK. This action plan must have a clear economic focus providing guidance on what trees we should be growing to meet domestic demand. It should also contain annual milestones for the proportion of domestically grown timber used, with an aim to double the amount of domestically grown timber being used in the UK by 2030.

While strengthening the demand for domestic timber may help the UK to meet its international commitment to end and reverse deforestation caused by UK businesses by 2030, it is only a small part of the solution. While not a central part of this inquiry, it also appeared to us that stronger action may be needed to stop UK-based financial institutions from supporting and profiting from any activity that is causing deforestation. We may return to look at this issue in a future inquiry.

Tree nursery representatives and the Forestry Commission told us that nurseries in the UK will struggle to expand production to deliver the number of young trees required for the Government to achieve its planting ambitions by the end of this Parliament. We believe that the Government should aim to meet all UK planting needs from domestically grown trees. To achieve this the Government needs to give the sector greater confidence to invest and expand production, given that it can take up to four years to grow the trees required for planting. We reiterate our recommendation that the UK Government set annual targets for the number Tree planting 41 of trees that will be planted in England, which we believe would greatly help the sectors’ confidence in the Government’s commitment to tree planting. We also ask the Government to update us on progress establishing a confidential information sharing system with nurseries, and on the outcomes of the £10m invested via the tree production innovation fund.

We were given reassurances that the closure of one of two Forestry England nurseries will not affect the overall ability of the nursery sector to produce enough trees. Given the challenges facing the sector, however, reducing the UK’s nursery capacity indicates a lack of policy co-ordination. We remain concerned about the additional pressure the closure may place on the sector and the possible reduction in our ability to manage risks to tree health. We believe that the Government should review the decision to close Wykeham nursery, given the need to maximise UK tree production and reduce our reliance on imports.

To meet the Government’s tree planting goals, we are going to need to import seeds and young trees until domestic capacity increases. This carries the risks of pests and diseases being introduced. We welcome the work Defra and the Forestry Commission are doing to tighten biosecurity and the additional funding that has been provided to support this work. However, we heard concerns that delays in introducing checks at the border, with checks instead occurring at the place of destination, increases the risk of pests and diseases being spread before they are detected. We recommend that Defra works with the Animal & Plant Health Agency to review the import controls are in place to ensure they prevent the spread of plant diseases and pests. The Government must ensure that all checks on imports of plants and trees are in place at the border from 1 July 2022.

The lack of a sufficiently large skilled workforce is a key barrier to England’s tree planting ambitions. Addressing this requires a well-funded and planned workforce and skills strategy. Defra and the Forestry Commission are working to address the issue, but work is in the early stages and looks unlikely to deliver the immediate improvement needed, particularly in woodland creation roles that need to increase by over 75%. We recommend that Defra commit to a target of bringing at least an extra three hundred new people into woodland creation roles by 2025. Defra should create a dedicated taskforce with membership from the Department for Education, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Forestry Commission and training providers, including land-based agricultural colleges, to agree and deliver a clear plan to meet this target. This taskforce should report back to us on its progress by October 2022.

We welcome the Government’s extension of the Seasonal Workers Pilot to the ornamental sector which should go some way to addressing the immediate labour shortage facing the sector. We recommend that Defra and the Home Office work with the nursery sector to review the number of seasonal worker visas available and consider whether further visas, beyond the current 30,000 are needed now that additional sectors have joined the scheme. We also recommend that the length of the visa for tree nursery workers be extended from 6 to 9 months to reflect the working season of that sector.

The application and approvals process for tree planting is seen as too bureaucratic by land-owning and forestry organisations. While we understand the importance of not weakening the environmental controls, there appears to be a consensus that it is possible to speed up the approval process by improving administration, guidance and advice. While the Government has provided additional resources for the Forestry Commission and Natural England, it needs to ensure that funding keeps pace with the likely increase in application numbers and requests for advice and support. We recommend that Defra consult on the criteria and process for its review of approvals regulations, which it should aim to conclude by December 2022. We further recommend that Defra set out what additional resources from the last Spending Review will be used to enable the Forestry Commission and Natural England to meet the additional work arising from the Government’s planting ambition and provide the analysis it has undertaken to assure itself that the planned funding is sufficient.

The current permanency rules discourage farmers and landowners from engaging with tree planting for fear that they will never be able to change the land use back to growing crops or grazing if the new woodland does not prove viable. While we recognise the need to maintain and develop the national timber reserve, this does not mean that the rules have to apply to new woodland growth on farmland. We recommend that Defra conducts an evidence-based review of the permanency rules and the impact they are having on tree-planting and consult on changes to the rules for new woodland creation.

We heard concerns that legal restrictions on many tenancies and their short-term length will prevent many tenant farmers from engaging in tree-planting. Conversely, we also heard concerns that landowners might withdraw land from tenants to benefit from attractive tree-planting subsidies themselves. There was, however, dispute over evidence of this already occurring. We welcome and encourage continued dialogue between the Tenant Farmers Association and Country Land & Business Association on tree planting. We recommend that Defra include within the new Tenancy Working Groups’s remit how to find practical and equitable ways to enable more tenant farmers to contribute to England’s tree-planting ambition.