§ Mr. KidneyTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what financial support her Department makes available to landowners to promote stewardship of(a) wetlands and (b) woodlands. [38496]
§ Alun MichaelThis Department and its agencies offer a broad range of land management agreements, which may provide landowners with financial support to promote stewardship of wetlands, woodlands and other types of land. Examples include the Environmentally Sensitive Areas, Countryside Stewardship and Farm Woodland Premium Schemes. The Forestry Commission's Woodland Grant Scheme provides financial support for the management, and planting, of woodland. These schemes are available through the England Rural Development Programme which offers £190 million in this financial year.796W It would be well-nigh impossible to separate out the spending on wetlands or woodlands and a couple of examples may help to explain why this is the case.
The Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) scheme includes some well-known wetlands (Somerset Levels; Broads; Suffolk River Valleys; Essex Coast; North Kent Marshes; Avon and Test Valleys). Total ESA payments to farmers in these areas will amount to £10 million this year. However, this figure would be difficult to separate into categories of land. In addition, the Environment Agency, English Nature and the Countryside Agency all make contributions to individual cases through their own mechanisms in pursuance of the objectives we have agreed with them.
Taking the Somerset Levels as an example, in the raised water level area, the Environment Agency provides funds for sluices and the ESA scheme contributes towards land management and ditch maintenance. In parts, there is SSSI land on which England Nature provides grants under the Wildlife Enhancement Scheme. In the Suffolk River Valleys ESA, financial support to farmers comes from a combination of ESA funds and Countryside Stewardship support. The Environment Agency and English Nature also support some cases. Further public sector support is also available from the local authority. Some schemes are supported by private money from the RSPB and National Trust. Many of these cases would also cover land other than wetland and woodland.
This joined up approach is now producing excellent results. The ESA and Countryside Stewardship schemes cover hundreds of individual cases which include wetland and woodland areas but dissecting the national spend on wetlands and woodland from each case could he achieved only at a disproportionate cost.