{"id":47921,"date":"2026-05-25T05:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T05:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/47921\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T05:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T05:55:10","slug":"a-new-national-forest-the-size-of-london-could-be-coming-to-an-area-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/47921\/","title":{"rendered":"A new national forest the size of London could be coming to an area near you"},"content":{"rendered":"

A \u00a37.5m competition to create England\u2019s next national forest<\/a> has just been launched \u2013 and the green space might end up being the size of Greater London.<\/p>\n

The new woodland is expected to cover between 200 and 600 square miles in the Midlands or North of England, with millions of trees<\/a> to be planted in the coming decades.<\/p>\n

This means the forest would cover an area the size of Birmingham at its smallest, and could be as large as the entirety of Greater London.<\/p>\n

It is the latest step in Labour\u2019s manifesto commitment to create three new national forests in England.<\/p>\n

The first, the Western Forest, is already under way and will stretch across Bristol, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset, with more than 20 million trees to be planted by 2050. A competition for the second, in the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, has recently concluded.<\/p>\n

These are additional to the very first national forest in England, which was established in 1991 and spans 200 square miles across parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Staffordshire.<\/p>\n

Unlike a national park, a national forest is not a protected designation or a single block of publicly owned land. Instead, it is a large-scale, long-term planting programme coordinated by a central body, with farmers and landowners participating voluntarily alongside existing towns, villages and farmland.<\/p>\n

Mary Creagh, the nature minister, said communities most in need of green space would be at the heart of plans to establish these new national forests.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo many communities can\u2019t access the green spaces that benefit mental and physical health,\u201d she said. \u201cThis new national forest will help change that, and I encourage every eligible organisation with the vision and expertise to come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Government is seeking a \u201cdelivery partner\u201d \u2013 an outside organisation, likely a charity, environmental body, or local authority consortium \u2013 to take on the project and run it on the ground.<\/p>\n

The first stage of the competition opened on Tuesday, with bids closing on 7 July. The successful bidder would work with landowners and communities to identify land, oversee planting, and manage the site long-term.<\/p>\n

Almost 10 million trees have been planted<\/p>\n

The existing national forest in the Midlands is run by the National Forest Company, a Government-backed charity, on the same model.<\/p>\n

Ministers have pointed to that scheme as a sign of what can be delivered.<\/p>\n

Since its creation, almost 10 million trees have been planted, canopy cover has risen from 6 per cent to more than 26 per cent, and 5,000 jobs have been created.<\/p>\n

The investment sits within what the Government has billed as the largest ever investment in nature, with more than \u00a31bn committed to tree planting and forestry this parliament.<\/p>\n

It is intended to help meet a statutory target to increase woodland cover to 16.5 per cent of England\u2019s land area by 2050, alongside a pledge to protect 30 per cent of land for nature by 2030.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s tree canopy and woodland cover currently stands at 14.9 per cent, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.<\/p>\n

A 2025 report from the Woodland Trust warned that woodland creation targets are still not being met, though progress has improved. <\/p>\n

Between 2020 and 2024, an average of 45 per cent of annual targets were achieved \u2013 up from 28 per cent between 2016 and 2020. <\/p>\n

The same report found that 26 per cent of people in the UK had not visited a woodland in recent years, with income-deprived areas having access to lower-quality green spaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u00a37.5m competition to create England\u2019s next national forest has just been launched \u2013 and the green space…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[24050,27,433,20],"class_list":["post-47921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-forests","tag-london","tag-politics-exclusive","tag-uk-politics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116633674373958035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}