A new set of forest towns will be built in the area between Oxford and Cambridgelocated in the middle of a new national forest.
After the collision anger groups nature With deregulation underway, ministers are attempting to demonstrate in the upcoming Planning Bill that mass housing can be delivered in conjunction with new nature. The government has pledged to plant millions of trees to improve England's natural environment.
Nature minister Mary Creagh told the Guardian: “The previous Labor government had a grand vision of garden cities after the Second World War, and given our tree planting promises, we thought: how can we create these forest cities that essentially bring nature closer to people, green jobs closer to these new communities and help us tackle climate change?”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced investment in the “Ox-Cam corridor” and hopes to connect cities to create a “Silicon Valley of Europe”. The government believes this is important for the UK's economic growth and says it could bring up to £78 billion to the UK economy by 2035. The government says it will build new cities and rail links between them.
At the same time, a new national forest will be built to provide those who live and work in the area with green space for recreation and to create high-quality nature to complement urban areas.
Creagh added that the announcement would be part of Keir Starmer's Cop30 proposal. She said: “The Prime Minister is at a meeting of world leaders, he is a forest policeman in the Amazon, and we are showing ourselves as a country that we are activating.”
She added that the model will show that government and developers can “use trees to create communities and provide beautiful homes for people and beautiful places where people want to live and builders want to build.”
Homes on the Oxford-Cambridge corridor will be within a 10-minute walk of woodland, she said: “It’s about creating places and spaces where generations of people will build homes, raise their families, they are beautiful places for people to live and where nature can thrive.”
Another national forest will be planted in the north of England, with a competition to identify the site launched early next year as part of this Parliament's commitment to more than £1 billion to plant trees and support the forestry sector. In March government declared Western Forestwhich is the first new national forest in three decades and is planned to stretch from the Cotswolds to the Mendips.
All departments were asked to link their policies to the Chancellor's “economic growth mission” and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said tree planting boosts growth, as achieving tree planting targets across the UK could create and support more than 14,000 jobs. Defra also said it would explore the possibility of creating a woodland carbon purchase fund, offering landowners upfront payments for planting carbon-rich woodland.
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Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said: “Our forests are vital to regulating the climate, supporting wildlife and increasing access to nature for us all.
“We are delivering on our manifesto commitment with three new national forests: plantings are underway in the West Country, a second will be between Oxford and Cambridge, and we will launch a competition for a third next year.”
More details of the government's efforts to conserve biodiversity are contained in the rewritten environmental improvement plan, which is expected to be published shortly. It will set out how ministers plan to achieve the legally binding conservation targets set out in the Environment Act 2021.
