The Government Is Funding Fire Engines While Banning Fire Prevention.
Lives "will be lost". That was the warning from the chair of the Climate Change Committee this week, after England and Wales recorded 1,350 wildfires this summer, the highest number ever.
She is right. But the BBC File on 4 Investigates report that carried her warning missed the most obvious point of all. The government is spending millions to fight wildfires while restricting one of the most effective ways to stop them.
And the people who manage that prevention on our moors, gamekeepers, didn't get a single mention.
The report was all about response. There were calls for more firefighters, specialist teams, off-road vehicles and aircraft. The government points to its £97m package as the biggest upgrade to national resilience in 20 years. Fire chiefs say even that isn't enough.
Nobody asked the obvious question: why are these fires so big to begin with?
The answer is fuel. A wildfire is only as dangerous as what it has to burn. Every summer we don't manage the vegetation on our uplands, there is more of it. It is drier and denser, and it is waiting.
Baroness Brown called for more preparation and more thought about fire breaks. On managed moorland, that isn't a future plan. It is what gamekeepers do every winter.
Controlled, cool burns in the wetter months take out the dry heather that would otherwise feed a summer blaze.
They leave a patchwork of fire breaks across the hill. When a barbecue, a cigarette or a campfire starts a fire in July, it hits ground with less to burn and barriers to stop it spreading. Where this management takes place, the risk of a major wildfire is severely reduced.
It costs the taxpayer nothing. It is done by people who know every inch of their ground. And the government is making it harder.
The Heather and Grass etc Burning (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 extend burning restrictions to peat of 30cm depth and across a wider area of the uplands. Controlled burning is now banned on more of our moorland than ever before.
Think about what that means. In the same year wildfires hit an all-time high, the government has taken a proven prevention tool out of the hands of the people best placed to use it. The Climate Change Committee warns the risk could double by 2050. Yet the fuel on our hills will keep building, year after year, by law.
That is not climate policy. It is a policy that leaves the uplands primed to burn.
We back our fire services. Their crews were sent the length of the country this summer to hold the line, and they deserve every penny of support. But no number of new vehicles will make up for thousands of acres of unm
anaged fuel. Without action on prevention, we are simply asking firefighters to face bigger, hotter and more dangerous fires every year.
The fire chiefs themselves warn that without action, 2027 and 2028 will look like 2026. They are right. And the way to get ahead of it starts on the land, not in the fire station.
The Prime Minister has promised a wildfire summit with fire and rescue services and other organisations. If gamekeepers and moorland managers aren't in that room, the summit will fail before it starts.
We are calling on the government to:
Revoke the Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 without delay.
Put controlled burning at the heart of national wildfire prevention planning
Give gamekeepers and moorland managers a seat at the Prime Minister's summit
The warnings have been made. The records have been broken. Now the government must stop tying the hands of the people who can prevent the next disaster.
