A new national forest the size of London could be coming to an area near you

A £7.5m competition to create England’s next national forest has just been launched – and the green space might end up being the size of Greater London.

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

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.

It is the latest step in Labour’s manifesto commitment to create three new national forests in England.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Too many communities can’t access the green spaces that benefit mental and physical health,” she said. “This new national forest will help change that, and I encourage every eligible organisation with the vision and expertise to come forward.”

The Government is seeking a “delivery partner” – an outside organisation, likely a charity, environmental body, or local authority consortium – to take on the project and run it on the ground.

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.

Almost 10 million trees have been planted

The existing national forest in the Midlands is run by the National Forest Company, a Government-backed charity, on the same model.

Ministers have pointed to that scheme as a sign of what can be delivered.

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.

The investment sits within what the Government has billed as the largest ever investment in nature, with more than £1bn committed to tree planting and forestry this parliament.

It is intended to help meet a statutory target to increase woodland cover to 16.5 per cent of England’s land area by 2050, alongside a pledge to protect 30 per cent of land for nature by 2030.

England’s tree canopy and woodland cover currently stands at 14.9 per cent, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

A 2025 report from the Woodland Trust warned that woodland creation targets are still not being met, though progress has improved.

Between 2020 and 2024, an average of 45 per cent of annual targets were achieved – up from 28 per cent between 2016 and 2020.

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.

المصدر: iNews