The planting of trees has the potential to play a significant part in our environmental priorities especially water quality, biodiversity and climate. My colleague Minister of State Pippa Hackett has announced her intention to explore how such planting along riparian margins could be promoted at scale. This would combine the best of our agri-environment measures, where over 1.5 million trees were planted under GLAS, for example, and better integration with our afforestation goals such as the Native Woodland establishment scheme
Any proposed planting of trees that is 0.1 ha or over in area is currently considered afforestation and must have an afforestation licence. As a consequence, individual tree planting measures that have been included in the GLAS and REAP Schemes, for example, must be below the 0.1 ha threshold. The planting of trees has been included in the REAP scheme as a complementary action. This will help us meet our intention to include significant tree-planting measures under our future agri-environment schemes in the next round of CAP.