Kirklees Council has played a crucial role in the growth of the Northern Forest via its tree-planting scheme.

Working with the White Rose Forest, the council planted nearly 15 hectares of woodland over 11 council-owned sites throughout the 2023/24 planting season, assisted by almost 1000 volunteers.

For the Northern Forest in total, according to the Woodland Trust, more than 1.9 million trees were planted last year - enough to fill more than 1200 football pitches.

The Northern Forest project, which spans Liverpool to Hull, was started in 2018 when the Woodland Trust joined with a number of Community Forests with the goal of establishing 50 million trees in 25 years, in an area which had at the time just 7.6 per cent tree cover (compared to the national average of 13 per cent).

Nick Sellwood, Northern Forest team lead for the Woodland Trust, said: "It was a very ambitious vision when we began the Northern Forest but what has been achieved for communities across the north, by bringing multiple agencies together, is nothing short of remarkable."

A report by Liverpool John Moores University identified that trees planted as part of the project have brought 300,000 extra households within 10 minutes' walk of publicly accessible woodland.