"You Haven't Taken People in the Upland Community With You": Parliament Holds Natural England to Account on Wildfire

There are moments in a select committee hearing when years of frustration are distilled into a single sentence. On Tuesday 23 June, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee gave the upland community one of those moments. Turning to Professor Sallie Bailey, Chief Scientist at Natural England, Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael delivered a verdict that gamekeepers, farmers and moorland managers across England have been waiting to hear spoken aloud in Parliament: "You haven't taken people in the upland community with you."

It was a simple observation.

It was also devastating. Because it goes to the heart of everything that has gone wrong with the way Natural England has approached moorland management over the past decade.

The session brought together a panel of witnesses with direct experience of wildfire and the landscapes most at risk from it. Among them was Richard Bailey, Group Coordinator of the Peak District Moorland Group, who sat alongside the Forestry Commission's wildfire adviser, the Chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Chair of the National Heat Risk Commission, and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust.

These were not campaigners or commentators. They were the people who manage the land, who fight the fires, and who study how fires behave. And the message they brought to Parliament was consistent with what those who live and work in the uplands have been saying for years.

The Chair's words mattered because they named the central failure. It has lost the confidence of the very communities whose cooperation it needs. For generations, gamekeepers and land managers have removed older vegetation through controlled burning, creating a mosaic of fuel breaks that slow the spread of wildfire and protect the peat beneath. This is not folklore. It is practical fire prevention, carried out by people who understand fuel load because they live with the consequences of getting it wrong.

Yet over the past decade Natural England has steadily restricted the practice, treating the accumulated knowledge of upland communities as an obstacle rather than an asset. New regulations introduced in 2021 contributed to a dramatic reduction in fuel load management across England's moorlands.

The result was entirely predictable to anyone who has spent time on the hills. Vegetation builds up. Dead material accumulates. And when a spark arrives, as it always eventually does, the fire that follows is hotter, faster and far more destructive than anything the uplands saw when they were actively managed.

The evidence of that failure is no longer confined to the moors. It is now a matter of parliamentary record.

The Committee has been examining the governance and evidence standards of Defra's arm's-length bodies, and Natural England's handling of the science on managed burning has drawn particular scrutiny. The agency's flagship evidence review was presented as having undergone rigorous peer review, yet when pressed it could not produce the basic documentation that any credible review process would generate. Its much-promised peat depth map arrived years late and was admitted to be unreliable for the very purpose it was built to serve. These are not the marks of an organisation that has earned the trust it demands.

What made Tuesday's exchange so telling was that it came from the Chair himself, summing up the weight of the evidence he had heard. This was not a partisan intervention. It was a recognition that an agency charged with protecting England's natural environment has alienated the people best placed to help it do so. When the science is contested, the documentation is missing, and the communities are excluded, the public is entitled to ask what exactly Natural England's approach is delivering.

The solution is not complicated, and the upland community has been offering it for years. Listen to the people who know the land. Value the expertise of those who have managed these landscapes across generations. Recognise that controlled burning, grazing and cutting are not enemies of biodiversity but tools that can protect it while reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire.

The Wildfire Commission established by the Regional Moorland Groups earlier this year has already shown what a genuine partnership between practitioners, fire services and academics can look like. The contrast with Natural England's approach could hardly be sharper.

Alistair Carmichael's words on Tuesday should be a turning point. Parliament has now said plainly what the uplands have long understood. Natural England has not brought its communities with it. Until it does, the moors will keep building fuel, the wildfires will keep growing, and the people who could help prevent them will keep being shut out of the conversation. The question now is whether Natural England is willing to listen, or whether it will once again retreat behind the comfort of office studies and contested reviews while the countryside burns.