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Lloyds Banking Group

Our lead partner Lloyds Banking Group will work with us to plant 10 million trees by 2030. These trees will help to reduce the impact of climate change, potentially absorbing 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Native woods and trees are vital to tackling the biodiversity and climate crises.

Credit: Rob Grange / WTML

Committing to native woods

In January 2020 the Woodland Trust and Lloyds Banking Group embarked on a transformational 10-year partnership. Together we have committed to plant 10 million native trees by 2030, making a real difference in our response to the nature and climate emergency. Our partnership is off to a flying start.

5 million

trees planted

in the first five years of our partnership.

Supporting a low carbon future

Lloyds Banking Group are working with the Woodland Trust to help farmers transition to a low carbon future by offering preferential funding for more than 0.5ha of new woodland, as part of our MOREwoods and MOREhedges schemes.

Our MOREwoods and MOREhedges schemes can bring a multitude of benefits to farms, such as: 

  • helping to manage flooding
  • providing woodfuel
  • offering habitats for wildlife

Farmers can choose to create a shelterbelt, fill a corner of a field or even plant a small wood.

Credit: Jill Jennings / WTML

Bringing communities together

In 2020, Lloyds Banking Group joined other partners to support us with our Community Tree Pack scheme over three years, which funded the planting of 500,000 trees.

We want to make sure that everybody in the UK has the chance to plant a tree, and thanks to our generous partners we are able to offer thousands of schools and communities free tree packs to plant themselves.

Credit: Philip Formby / WTML

Creating 10 new woods

With Lloyds Banking Group's support we will be creating 10 brand new 'woods within woods' at Woodland Trust sites across the UK. 

In 2021, we created two new woods together: an area within our new site at Glas-na-Bradan in Belfast and an extension to Butterdean Woods in East Lothian. Nearly 180 colleagues helped us to plant these new woods, as well as local children and community groups.

Lloyds colleagues were keen to get their hands dirty and are playing an active role in creating these new woods alongside members of the local community.

The first wood was planted at our Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood, thanks to the help of Lloyds Banking Group employees and local schoolchildren.

So the site here at Hayhills is going to be one of 10 LLoyds Banking Group woods. It's 38 hectares, 94 acres in size. It's a great asset in terms of biodiversity, creating new native broadleaf woodland, also extending the habitat in terms of existing woodland and also more importantly for the local community. It's going to be a great asset, extending existing access, public rights of way on the site and just a great place for volunteering people to get involved.

So areas like this will use the benefit of the existing woodland so we can buffer that and, where we can, allow it to do its own thing. And there'll be areas of the site where we'll maintain these amazing views over the wider landscape. Some areas will be a bit denser planted. Some areas will be left as open meadow and other areas we've got the existing hedgerow and things like that as well. 

Well, what's happening here at Hayhills is a great example of collaboration, not only with the Woodland Trust but also with Lloyds Banking Group getting involved in acquiring a site for public benefit. And we're seeing a really unique site here where you've got some woodland that is bolting onto a new planting scheme, creating a wildlife corridor. And this is all about providing additional public access, additional learning opportunities for young people, not only in the Keighley and Ilkley constituency but further afield.   

At the Woodland Trust we're all about making sure we've got more trees and woods in the landscape. And an area like this, historically, it would have been a lot more wooded. So it's bringing back that biodiversity and woodland that would've been here centuries ago, in effect. There's discussion with them about the sort of access as well and the planting should help in terms of natural flood management and reducing pollution. 

And it's really good that when you've got a banking organisation like Lloyds wanting to get involved in these nature-based projects in providing the funding but working with the likes of yourselves at the Woodland Trust, it just goes to show that when people and big organisations come together, you can deliver for local communities through nature-based projects and planting schemes right here just outside Silsden. 

Be the change

Learn more about how we can grow together and create a brighter future.