Landowners, land managers and public bodies can apply to the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) for support to create new woodland, including through natural colonisation, on areas as small as one hectare.

You could receive up to £10,200 per hectare, plus up to a further £8,000 in Additional Contributions for public benefits, to support your woodland creation scheme.

There are four types of payment available under EWCO:

• support for the capital items and activities to establish new woodland, with payments covering 100% of standard costs (the national average)
• 15 years of annual Maintenance Payments to help establish the young trees once the capital works are complete
• a contribution towards the actual cost of installing infrastructure to either enable the current and future management of the woodland, or to provide recreational access
• optional Additional Contributions where the location of the woodland and its design will deliver public benefits. You can apply for multiple Additional Contributions on the same land where the woodland is in the right location and the design will provide multiple public benefits

EWCO is open to owner occupiers, tenants, landlords and licensors who have full management control of the land in the application (if you don't have full management control you will need consent from those who do). Joint applications, multiple land managers and applications on common land and areas of shared grazing are eligible.

Land is eligible if it is:

• in England
• within the full management control of the applicant (or, where applicable, any counter-signatories)
• not already classified as woodland
• not subject to any existing legal requirement or obligation to create woodland
• not subject to a dispute between landlords and tenants
• not currently within an existing grant agreement that has more than five months left to run at the time the EWCO application is submitted (if the land or part of it is in an Environmental Stewardship agreement it may be possible to transfer the land into EWCO as long as certain conditions are met)

EWCO is a criteria-based competitive scheme. We will offer Agreements to applicants with woodland creation proposals whose scores meet or exceed a threshold score.