What grants can I get to plant trees in England?

Forestry has long been seen as a poor relation to agriculture, and most woodlands have historically tended to be planted on sites that are marginal for farming such as those with poor soils or that are steep or have poorly drained land.

More recently many people, including policymakers, have increasingly recognised the different benefits that woodlands can provide, not only to landowners but also to local communities and wider society. This has led to an increased interest in creating new woodlands.

In turn, the UK government signalled its wish to see significantly more land planted with trees, setting a target of 30,000ha of new woodland to be created each year to reduce carbon emissions and enhance biodiversity. This is a significant increase on the levels of tree planting carried out over the past 30 years. 

The low point was in 2015-16, when the area of land planted with trees fell below 6,000ha. Since then, the amount of land planted with trees has increased, but still remains below the government's 30,000ha per year target, despite the initial ambition of achieving that by 2025.

To encourage more tree planting and achieve their ambitious targets, the governments of each UK nation have offered a range of grants to encourage landowners to plant more trees.

Many of these grants have been enhanced over the past five years. For example, in England, the Forestry Commission introduced a new woodland planting grant in 2021, called the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO), which provided significantly better rates than the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which was the main government grant at the time. 

In 2024, Defra and the Forestry Commission announced an increase in the EWCO. The planting rates have also increased over the past five years. The amount of woodland created in England increased from 2,100ha in 2021 to 5,800 ha in 2025 according to Forest Research statistics 2025.

The Forestry Commission grants currently available in England are set out below. These are the Woodland Creation Planning Grant (WCPG) and the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO), which includes a capital grant for the establishment of the woodland and future annual maintenance payments.

The former provides funding for a woodland creation design plan that complies with the UK Forestry Standard (UKFS). There are two stages to this grant with each stage having its own grant payment. Stage one is a preliminary assessment, essentially a desk-based exercise to identify constraints such as environmental land designations that may affect the proposed scheme.

This helps determine whether planting should go ahead, and if so which areas of the proposed site are appropriate. It also helps inform the planting design, including the choice of species. This grant amounts to £1,500.

If your proposal passes stage one, you can proceed to stage two, which centres on the production of a woodland creation design plan and pays £150 per hectare minus the initial £1,500. Additional funding for specialist surveys may also be available, capped at £30,500 per project.

This grant is designed to encourage better thought-out and better-quality schemes. Once you have a plan, this can be used for an EWCO application or other regionally based woodland creation grants.

The Forestry Commission has set these rates for both stages of this grant at a level that it believes will defray most, if not all, the professional costs. To be eligible for this grant, the minimum planting area must be five hectares or more.

The EWCO is designed to cover up to 100% of the capital costs of tree planting and is capped at £10,200 per hectare. A range of factors can influence the costs. In particular, these are as follows:

• choice of species, as broad-leaved trees tend to be more expensive than conifers
• stocking density, i.e. the more trees per hectare the greater is the cost per hectare
• presence of pests and the need to protect newly planted trees from them; for instance, using individual shelters or fencing to protect against rabbit or squirrel damage
• difficult site conditions
• areas of the country where labour costs tend to be higher.

This could mean that £10,200 per hectare may not cover the costs. However, additional contributions may be available to supplement this EWCO payment if the new planting scheme is deemed to offer public benefits, such as biodiversity, permissive access for recreation, flood mitigation and improved water quality.

These additional contributions can be combined, so you can apply for multiple additional contributions on the same land. So, where a new woodland project's location and design are deemed to provide multiple public benefits, the total contributions could amount to an additional £12,700 per hectare of stackable payments.

In addition to these capital grants, there are annual maintenance payments. These are now £400 per hectare per year and last for 15 years. They are designed to defray the costs of looking after the new woodland. Operations such as beating up (replacing failed trees), weed control and checking and maintaining fences and shelters are all necessary to ensure successful establishment, but they all cost money. 

The number of units arising from the woodland creation scheme will vary according to the type of woodland and the productivity of the site it is planted on. Likewise, the price that you can achieve from selling those units will also vary – the type of woodland and its location impacts the quality of ecosystem services that it can provide, and the subsequent marketing and timing of the sale can also affect the price.

A new native woodland, planted on a lowland site, for example, could be expected to sequester 300 to 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare over 100 years. The market for the sale of woodland carbon units is still evolving. Based on anecdotal evidence, it appears that a wide range of prices are currently being achieved, somewhere between £20 and £60 per tonne for units registered with the WCC, which would equate to between £6,000 and £30,000 per hectare.

The sale of carbon credits can therefore provide a significant additional income and so optimising both the value and the amount of carbon credits will be an important consideration, particularly for the larger woodland creation projects, where the financial returns are a key driver. In turn, good professional advice to optimise the design of the planting scheme and to realise the optimum price from the sale of the carbon units accruing is also essential.

Indeed, several well-known estates have planted up parts of their more marginal agricultural land. Not only will this have helped them diversify their sources of income, but also to gain a guaranteed income rather than be subject to the vagaries of the agricultural commodity prices. It could also help their environmental, social and governance credentials.

Nevertheless, despite such potential benefits, there are still relatively few areas of new woodland planting that have to date been registered under the WCC. There are a number of reasons for this. 

In particular, the costs of registration and validation for the WCC are likely to be considerable and so it only tends to be financially worthwhile for the larger schemes, of at least five hectares. There are also various eligibility criteria that need to be complied with. 

This might mean that a new woodland creation project designed for optimum timber production might not satisfy the WCC requirement or still be eligible for the previously mentioned grant funding.

There may also be other nature-based opportunities, such as flood alleviation schemes or biodiversity offsetting.

Furthermore, while owners of larger estates might be able to identify and could afford to lose 10ha or more to woodland, it would be a greater challenge for smaller farming businesses. Planting trees on non-afforested land can also affect the value of the land.

RICS members who are advising clients on valuation of such land should refer to the current edition of RICS' Valuation of woodlands and forests.

Most farms have small areas of land that would benefit from tree planting; for instance, planting several rows of trees along hedges and other boundaries to provide a wind-break, or to plant up an awkward field corner.

Organisations such as the Woodland Trust and the Soil Association have been advocating such tree planting. But without additional financial support, these smaller schemes are less likely to materialise. 

Currently, woodland projects need to be at least 1ha in size to be eligible for EWCO funding. While this can be made up of smaller areas of new planting, finding at least one hectare of land can be a challenge for many smaller farms.

There are, however, grants available for in-field tree planting to encourage landowners and farmers to integrate trees with agricultural activities on the same land. These grants were launched in 2024. While there has been interest, uptake so far has been limited.

A version of this article was originally published on 21 June 2024