Woodland Tree Health Restoration grant

You must manage eligible land entirely within England. Owner-occupiers, tenants, landlords and people granting others a licence to use their land can apply if they have the necessary control over the land and funded activities. Business partnerships can also apply.

The trees being felled must have one of these confirmed infections:

• Larch or sweet chestnut with Phytophthora ramorum or Phytophthora pseudosyringea: confirmation by a statutory plant health notice (SPHN) or a Forestry Commission adviser.
• Douglas fir or Western hemlock with Phytophthora pluvialis: confirmation by SPHN.
• Ash with Chalara ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus): confirmation by the Forestry Commission or the Animal and Plant Health Agency.
• Sweet chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica): confirmation by SPHN.

An SPHN is an official plant-health notice specifying actions you must follow. Those actions continue to apply when you replant. For suspected infections, contact your Forestry Commission woodland officer about confirmation.

• Land control: normally you need control for five years from the agreement start date, including maintaining and using funded items as agreed. Tenants need their landlord's agreement before applying. They must have a tenancy covering at least three years from the agreement start, or the landlord's countersignature, and must not breach their tenancy conditions. For a rolling annual tenancy, check with the landlord that it will cover the agreement, or obtain their countersignature. If the tenancy expires before the end of the five-year maintenance period, the terms allow the landlord's written consent for you to complete and maintain the work, or a countersigned Land Ownership and Control form committing the landlord to maintain it. A landlord taking over must themselves be eligible. If you cannot meet the control requirements yourself, obtain written consent from all other parties with management control.
• Land used by someone else: applying landlords must retain control, give tenants a copy of the grant agreement and ensure compliance. People granting a licence must put the relevant requirements in the licence and remain responsible for compliance. A licensee—the person allowed to use the land—usually lacks enough control to apply. A licence that actually gives wider land-management responsibilities may instead make you an eligible tenant, subject to the tenant tests.
• Public land and commons: land owned or managed by Crown bodies, including government departments and executive agencies, or non-departmental public bodies is excluded. Local-authority, national-park-authority and public-corporation land can qualify where work is outside their public duties; parish councils and former college farms can apply. Public-body tenants must check land eligibility with their landlord and obtain a countersignature if their tenancy does not cover the full grant term. For common land, apply as one entity, either a sole beneficiary or a registered group with a Single Business Identifier (SBI). The group needs sufficient control, must take reasonable steps to contact and consult everyone with a legal interest in managing the common land, and must obtain the owner's consent where required.
• Site size and condition: the grant defines woodland as at least 0.5 hectares, averaging at least 20 metres wide, with groups or lines of trees that reach or will reach 5 metres and tree canopies covering more than 20% of the ground. You need not include the whole woodland: the affected block must be at least 0.1 hectares. Trees outside woodland have a separate TE1/TE4 replacement route, with planting locations advised by the woodland officer. Agreed works must be worth at least £500. Developed land, hard standing and land with incompatible obligations are excluded. Land formally safeguarded for the High Speed Two (HS2) railway is also excluded. Safeguarding protects land identified for the railway from conflicting development. Use the safeguarding maps in the official HS2 safeguarding collection to check whether your land is within that formal boundary, rather than judging how close it is to the railway.
• TE4 woodland layout: for woodland restocking under TE4, the minimum agreement area is 0.25 hectares, with blocks of at least 0.1 hectares and a minimum width of 20 metres. Plant at least 1,100 stems per hectare; exceptionally, a specific biodiversity benefit may justify 400. Internal open space is limited to 20% of the woodland area. Each woodland clearing (glade) must be no larger than 0.5 hectares after canopy closure—the stage when the surrounding trees' crowns have grown together. The application annex also excludes larger open areas exceeding 0.5 hectares or 20 metres in width from woodland.
• Planting requirements: replacement species must suit the soil and climate and follow the UK Forestry Standard's rules for good forestry practice and applicable felling-licence conditions. Do not replant the species affected by disease. TE4 cannot fund ash, woodland for Christmas-tree or biomass production, cricket-bat willows, or planting that damages ecological, archaeological or historic features. Plant Healthy-certified nurseries must be used where possible: this certification checks growers' and handlers' measures to prevent pests and diseases spreading. UK-grown stock is preferred, not compulsory.
• Species after disease: after ramorum, do not plant larch or sweet chestnut if those species were removed because of the disease. Do not plant rhododendron. The replacement guidance allows susceptible beech, holm oak, white willow, Douglas fir, western hemlock, grand fir, Turkey oak and sessile oak only where previous local infection is low. After sweet chestnut blight, do not plant any Castanea chestnut species; at-risk oak, maple, sumac, hickory and chinquapin species must wait until infection risk has gone. Spruce planting is prohibited in the Ips typographus (eight-toothed spruce bark beetle) demarcated control area; use the boundary map linked from the applicant guide.
• Protected woodland and sites: on ancient woodland sites, protect surviving ancient woodland features and restock native species or naturalised species—introduced species that have become established. The Forestry Commission may allow up to 20% conifers only if they will not harm those features. The guidance recommends a layout that becomes mainly broadleaved without management, for example by scattering conifers singly or in groups of three to five. Alternating single-species rows are not accepted. The replacement guidance applies the same advice to sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). On an SSSI affected by ash dieback, it says to use natural regeneration where possible—trees establishing themselves rather than being planted. The Forestry Commission can advise whether this is suitable for your site. This grant still requires a tree-planting item; the site assessment determines whether the proposed Restoration grant is appropriate.
• Choosing TE1 or TE4: TE1 trees must be native and at least 2 metres tall. Carry out TE1 work between 30 September and 1 March, space trees irregularly at least 20 metres apart, and do not plant beneath or within 20 metres of overhead lines or other overhead or underground services. Stake, tie, tag, protect and weed them; in hedgerows, plant in gaps or cut notches. For TE4, use appropriate planting stock compliant with the Forest Reproductive Material Regulations where applicable. These rules make regulated seed and planting stock traceable to its source and give buyers information about genetic quality. For material covered by the rules, use a registered supplier and obtain the supplier's document provided on delivery; the grant applicant does not have to register merely to buy trees. Plant when dormant and fit required guards immediately. Broadleaved trees need 0.6-metre spiral guards secured with canes unless your Forestry Commission or Natural England adviser agrees that they can be omitted; conifers do not need spirals.
• Other funding and obligations: do not seek funding for work already funded by another source. Existing Countryside Stewardship, Environmental Stewardship or Sustainable Farming Incentive land can qualify for different compatible work, but not work already required by that agreement. TE4 allows restocking after a conditional felling licence only where the licence was issued for tree-health reasons. Other legal or contractual obligations, including tenancy requirements, cannot be duplicated. The terms expressly allow conservation covenants—binding agreements to conserve land—where no other funding has or will be paid for the activity. They also allow Flood Defence Grant in Aid, a public flood-defence funding route, where there is no double funding and the activity is not a legal requirement of the relevant flood-risk authority.

Before planting under TE4, check whether a forestry Environmental Impact Assessment is needed to assess the proposed work's environmental effects, and agree site-specific requirements with your Forestry Commission adviser. Get all necessary consents before starting work. These can include felling permission unless exempt, Natural England consent for work on or near an SSSI, Historic England consent for work on or near a scheduled monument, and permissions protecting species, watercourses or highways, as applicable to the site. An SSSI agreement cannot start until Natural England has granted consent. Consents, approvals and permissions must remain effective throughout the agreement and the five-year maintenance period. RPA checks insolvency and financial viability. Applications over £50,000 need a qualified accountant's statement confirming resources to complete the work; over £500,000 also requires three years of relevant business accounts or other evidence.

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• Applications are accepted all year. Approval depends on eligibility and sufficient budget; autumn or winter disease confirmation may delay processing until spring.[^c2][^c3][^c16]

1. Register and prepare the proposal. Register yourself and every included land parcel in the Rural Payments service. An agent needs the correct permissions there to act for you. Download the Woodland Tree Health (WTH) application form and request its annex from RPA at ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk or 03000 200 301. Complete the form, Restoration information in the annex and an annotated application map showing parcel references. If you lack the required land control, include a Land Ownership and Control form, or an agreement from your landlord if the landlord is a public body. Include the common-land supplement where relevant and any other required evidence. TE1 also needs a map of existing hedgerow trees. A woodland management plan is strongly recommended, rather than a universal prerequisite.
2. Send the application to RPA. Email the form, annex, map and supporting documents to ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk, with “Woodland Tree Health grant application 2026” and your SBI in the subject. Put your SBI on all documents; emailed maps must be PDFs. Each email must be no larger than 32MB; number split emails. An emailed application does not need a signature. Alternatively, post signed documents to Rural Payments Agency, PO Box 324, Worksop, S95 1DF. RPA checks the application, then a Forestry Commission woodland officer assesses the site and works through the proposal with you. Applications are not competitive, but approval requires eligibility and sufficient budget. Autumn or winter applications may wait until spring for disease confirmation, with photographs requested where needed.
3. Accept the offer before starting funded work. Return the signed acceptance within 20 working days of the date on the offer. Do not begin grant-funded restoration work or buy its materials before the agreement start date unless RPA explicitly permits prior expenditure in writing. Complete works within three calendar years from the agreement start date. If you use your own labour, keep employee- and employer-signed timesheets showing the rate, work and date.
4. Claim after completing the work and being charged or invoiced. Use the Rural Payments service, or ask RPA for a paper claim form if you cannot claim online. Submit the required dated completed-work photographs and keep receipted invoices proving payment. The minimum claim is £500, except for a final claim following interim claims. RPA must receive claims within three months after the agreement ends, which can be earlier than the maximum three-year term. Claims received more than three but less than six months after the end are reduced; those received more than six months after the end are not accepted.

Maintain funded items in the agreed condition and specification, and use them only for their approved purpose, for five years from the agreement start date. Replace dead trees in the next planting season; TE4 trees must be alive and in good condition at the agreement end, and TE1 must retain the agreed number of live trees. The linked restocking guidance also requires replacement of trees that fail within five years after planting. Keep relevant invoices and records for at least seven years after the agreement ends, including the item-specific planting and photographic records.

Allow RPA-authorised compliance visits and provide access to land, premises and records covered by the agreement, with reasonably requested assistance and evidence. Notify RPA in writing without delay if circumstances might affect your eligibility, grant amount, completion of the work or ability to meet the agreement. If an applicable RPA temporary-adjustment notice waives that notification, the exception lasts only while the adjustment applies; notify RPA if the change continues afterwards.

Get RPA's written agreement before changing funded items, their locations or timing. You cannot transfer the agreement during its three-year period. The terms also require written notification of a transfer affecting management control of agreement land within 90 days of the transfer. Selling or letting affected land ends the agreement on those parcels and may require repayment; selling or letting during the later maintenance period may also lead to repayment.