Trees and Hedgerows Stakeholder Delivery Group: terms of reference

This is a joint delivery/advisory group. It is a voluntary group providing advice and support to Welsh Government on delivery of targets for tree planting and hedgerow creation in Wales, balanced against other key land-use and wider socio-economic and cultural objectives.  The group will also consider approaches to the on-going maintenance and management of trees & hedges as key elements of Wales’ natural capital. Members include representatives from government, the farming industry, the forestry sector, eNGOs, the scientific community, and other major landowners.

The role of the T&H Stakeholder Delivery Group is to:

• Support the development of the Sustainable Farming Scheme level targets for tree planting and hedgerow creation and the tools to deliver them, enabling discussion at the SFS Ministerial Roundtable and a decision by Welsh Ministers.
• Support improved understanding across the sector of the purpose and value of the scheme level targets by explaining and championing the multiple benefits of trees and hedges for the farm and the environment.  
• Provide advice on annual trajectories for tree planting & hedgerow creation in support of Welsh Government targets, including land both within and outside of the Sustainable Farming Scheme.  
• Monitor progress against the annual trajectories, making recommendations for action if delivery is not on track.
• Review and develop a shared understanding of the barriers to planting and incentives for planting, and make recommendations on actions to make it an attractive and feasible option on Welsh farms, as well as easier and quicker for landowners and managers to get trees and hedges planted.  
• Identify actions to change the narrative on integrating trees and hedges on farms – recognising the multiple benefits they can have for farm businesses and the environment.
• Consider approaches for ensuring the on-going maintenance and management of trees and hedgerows in Wales in way which maximises the multiple benefits of those natural resources.

Initially the focus will be on the period between 2025 and 2030, but with the remit of the group expanding to focus on the period from 2030-2050 over time.

The group will be provided with aggregated data on tree planting and hedgerow creation, Welsh Government expenditure on supporting tree planting and hedgerow creation and other analysis to inform their work. This will include the presentation of planting rates and detail on expenditure currently and on an annual basis thereafter, ensuring full visibility of progress being made.

The Board will be chaired by Naomi Matthiessen, Deputy Director for Landscapes, Nature & Foresty.

Proposed membership is as follows:

• Representative Organisations
• Confor
• Woodland Trust – Coed Cadw
• Farming Union of Wales (FUW)
• National Farmers Union Cymru (NFU Cymru)
• Country Land & Business Association (CLA Cymru)
• Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN)
• Wildlife Trust Wales
• Soil Association
• Llais y Goedwig
• Dŵr Cymru
• National Trust
• Natural Resources Wales (NRW)
• World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
• Forest Research
• Protected Designated Landscape representative
• Hedgerows expert
• Welsh Government

Deputies

Organisations should aim to provide consistency of attendance but can send a deputy with agreement of the Chair.

Observers

Specific observers/presenters may be invited to specific meetings of the group if the agenda requires it.

The Group will hold hybrid meetings with the option of both in-person attendance and Teams.

The Group will meet twice a month until the middle of March 2025, at which point the regularity of meetings will be reviewed.  The need for relatively frequent meetings is envisaged initially due to the significant amount of work associated with taking forward the development of the detail of the Sustainable Farming Scheme in relation to trees and hedges.

The Group will form a key part of the Welsh Government Trees & Forestry Policy governance arrangements and will report into the internal Forestry Reform Board.  The Group will also have a reporting line to the SFS Ministerial Roundtable for all elements of their remit which relate to the SFS scheme design and implementation.

Secretariat duties will be provided by the Welsh Government Trees & Forestry Policy Team.

During the first 3 months of operation the Group will focus on the following key deliverables:

• Agree approach to scheme-level targets for trees and hedges to be presented to the Deputy First Minister
• Define scale and scope of the opportunity plan and linkages to grant applications for agreement through the Forestry Reform Board and SFS Roundtable
• Recommend sensitivity layers to support the opportunity plan, including any that need updating, to be approve by the DFM
• Begin development of the process and a support structure around completing the plan including guidance and advice for agreement through Forestry Reform Board and SFS Roundtable.

In Wales, Welsh Government wants to support a wide range of tree planting and hedgerow creation to achieve multiple benefits, from trees & hedges adding value to farm businesses, to woodland which will provide valuable new habitat and mitigate the impacts of flooding, and all of it locking up carbon from the atmosphere, helping to tackle the climate emergency.

Welsh Government has ambitious targets for woodland creation and creation of new hedgerows:

• Woodland for Wales Strategy (2018): we want woodland cover to increase by at least 2000 hectares per annum from 2020 to 2030 and beyond
• CCC “Path to Net Zero in Wales” report (2020): need to create 43,000 hectares of woodland by 2030 and 180,000 hectares by 2050 – increasing woodland cover from 15% to 24% by 2050.  
• CCC Progress Report (2023): Maintain and enhance incentives to support agroforestry and hedgerows in the Welsh farmed landscape over the transition to the new post-CAP framework. Plant trees on 2% of farmland by 2025 while maintaining its primary use, rising to 5% by 2035, and extend hedgerows by 20% by 2035 and better manage existing hedgerows.

Welsh Government is committed to delivering the Sustainable Land Management Objectives set out in the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023l.  Wales also has significant commitments in relation to the nature and biodiversity crisis under the Global Biodiversity Framework and through the forthcoming Environmental Governance, Principles and Biodiversity Targets Bill.  Done in the right way, tree planting and hedgerow creation can positively support all these objectives and commitments.

Currently Wales is averaging around 700ha of planting per year and we have a further 40,000ha of planting to deliver in the next 5 years to meet the CCC’s target for 2030.  There are similarly challenging targets across the UK nations and the newly formed UK Trees Taskforce offers valuable opportunities to collaborate to increase tree planting rates.

The Timber and Trees Deep Dive, was established in the early summer of 2021 to identify and address barriers to tree planting, publishing its recommendations in July of that year. Many of the recommendations have been completed or are in the process of being implemented.

The Tree and Forestry Delivery Plan, currently being developed will build on the recommendations of the Deep Dive exercise and the work of the Carbon Sequestration Review Panel and prioritise actions to increase levels of tree planting.    

Trajectories for tree planting and hedgerow creation need to be established between now and 2030, based on a realistic assessment of tree planting/hedgerow creation potential.  Efforts need to prioritised in order to deliver as much planting and hedgerow creation as possible towards the CCC’s target by 2030, balancing other land use and wider socio-economic and cultural objectives.

As the largest landowning sector, farmers have the most significant role to play in supporting tree planting and hedgerow creation in Wales. Historically other landowners, such as charities and other public sector bodies, have not accessed significant WG grant funding to create woodland. Acknowledging this, efforts need to focus on enabling and incentivising farmers to plant trees and hedges, whilst also engaging a wider range of organisations in tree planting and hedgerow creation in a prioritised way – focussed on those landowners beyond farmers where the most significant opportunities exist.  

In May 2024 the Deputy First Minister, with responsibility for Rural Affairs, announced the establishment of a SFS Ministerial Roundtable. The Roundtable has a wide representation from the farming industry, farmers, the wider supply chain, and veterinary, nature, forestry, and food sectors.  The purpose of the group is to further develop the partnership approach needed to finalise the design and implementation of the SFS, building on previous phases of co-design and engagement. Input from the Roundtable will help inform options before Welsh Ministers make final scheme design and implementation decisions.  

The Roundtable is supported by two subgroups, an Officials Working Group and the Carbon Sequestration Evidence Review Panel (known onwards as “Carbon Panel”)

This Carbon Panel is a representative cross section of the Roundtable members and was established to explore the evidence underpinning further or alternative actions to sequester carbon within the Universal Layer of the Scheme. 

The Carbon Panel have explored the potential Actions, the evidence base, the scale of opportunity for each Action to be undertaken across Wales including the practical considerations at farm level for tree planting and hedgerow creation.

The Carbon Panel recognised the value of more trees and hedges in line with a right tree, right place approach and put forward a set of recommendations to support the delivery of more tree planting and hedgerow creation on Welsh farms. This included that within the SFS and in broader policy, the Welsh Government address the barriers to tree planting on Welsh farms that are currently contributing to an underachievement of tree planting targets. We envisage that the work of the T&H Stakeholder Delivery Group will consider how to action the Carbon Panel recommendations where appropriate.