Our Firefighters Are Right - But They Only Have Half the Solution

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has issued an urgent warning to government (you can read their letter here). With devastating wildfires having already scorched over 47,000 hectares in 2025, they are clear: fire services are overstretched and under-resourced, and the situation is becoming unsustainable.

The Moorland Association agrees entirely. Our firefighters face increasingly severe conditions on the frontline of a fast-changing climate. They deserve the equipment, training and support required to keep themselves, and the public, safe.

But while proper funding of our fire services is essential, it addresses only one half of the challenge.

A strategy focused solely on suppression is like trying to empty a flooding bathtub with a bucket while leaving the taps running. To truly protect communities, landscapes and peatland habitats, we must prevent small fires becoming uncontrollable wildfires in the first place.

Fuel Loads Are Rising - And With Them, Wildfire Risk

Wildfires are driven by fuel. In the uplands, this fuel takes the form of dry vegetation such as ageing heather and grass that has been allowed to accumulate over large areas. Evidence from wildfire scientists, the National Fire Chiefs Council, and the Government’s own Climate Change Risk Assessment shows that heavy, continuous fuels increase the intensity, speed and severity of wildfires.

Today, across parts of England’s uplands, these fuel loads are reaching dangerous levels. Reductions in vegetation management, in some places by over 70%, combined with lower grazing pressure leave an estimated 600,000 tonnes of additional dry material building up each year.

Research shows that older, unmanaged heather can dry surface peat and provide the conditions for deep-burning wildfires that are far harder to control and far more damaging to carbon stores, habitats and public health.

Land Managers Want to Reduce These Risks - But Are Often Prevented

Many land managers have sought permission to reduce hazardous fuel loads, whether through cutting, grazing management or controlled burning. In several cases, including Swaledale, requests for safe, preventative vegetation management were declined despite clear concerns about escalating wildfire risk.

We have long supported a balanced regulatory approach. But any system must allow practical measures that reduce fuel, break up the landscape into smaller fire-resistant blocks, and support the emergency services when wildfires occur.

Around the country, upland keepers and estate workers act as the “eyes and ears” on the ground, providing vital early response at no cost to the taxpayer. Preventative management is a critical part of this contribution.

Prevention + Response: The Only Strategy That Works

To genuinely safeguard rural communities, peatlands and wildlife, we need an integrated two-pillar approach:

1. A Well-Resourced Fire Service

Government should act on the FBU’s call and ensure that fire services have the capacity, equipment and specialist wildfire capability needed to respond when fires break out.

2. Effective, Practical Fuel Load Management

Land managers must be supported, and enabled, to reduce the build-up of hazardous fuels. This includes improving access to proven techniques such as cutting and controlled burning, alongside grazing where appropriate. International wildfire science and UK evidence are clear: fire suppression without proactive fuel management leaves landscapes vulnerable to large-scale, high-intensity fires.

This is not theory - it is experience.

A Safer, More Resilient Future Is Within Reach

The solution to rising wildfire risk does not lie in choosing between firefighters and land managers. It lies in bringing the two together, backed by a regulatory system that understands both prevention and response.

If we equip our fire services and empower those who manage the land, we can reduce fuel loads, protect peatlands, and prevent the kinds of uncontrollable wildfires that threaten lives, livelihoods and habitats.

This is the common-sense, evidence-based approach that will keep our uplands, and the communities around them, safe.

Fire Brigades Union Letter to the Government

Subject: Protect our communities – fund the fund the frontline response to the climate crisis.

Dear Chancellor,

As COP30 gathers in Brazil to discuss the global response to the climate crisis, we urge the government to prioritise the welfare and safety of our communities. First and foremost, we must limit the damage of climate change, by urgently cutting carbon emissions.

But we also need to adapt. There is stark evidence that the UK is dangerously under-prepared for the growing threat of wildfires, flooding, and the wider impacts of the climate crisis.

That is why we are writing to you, as organisations working across public safety, climate action, and economic and social justice ahead of the Budget to ask you to make substantial, long-term investment in the UK’s fire and rescue service.

The Global Wildfire Information System has estimated that by November, wildfires had burned 47,026 hectares in 2025 in the UK – the largest area in any year since monitoring began in 2012, and more than double the area burned in the record-breaking summer of 2022.

Scientific projections are clear. The number of days with “very high” fire danger will triple by the 2050s and rise more than five-fold by the 2080s. This will be a threat to public safety everywhere, though will be concentrated especially in southern and eastern England.

The Met Office’s UK Climate Projections show that the risk of intense rainfall is rising sharply, while evidence from the Committee on Climate Change and DEFRA points towards increasing flood risk across the UK, now and in the future. This includes flooding from seas and rivers, as well as surface water flooding from sudden downpours.

The government’s own National Risk Register lists both wildfires and severe flooding as major national threats, capable of inflicting prolonged disruption to infrastructure, utilities, transport networks and public health. Yet there is no UK-wide strategy to prepare fire and rescue services for the accelerating climate crisis, and no dedicated investment to build resilience.

The fire and rescue service has lost nearly 12,000 firefighters since 2010, equating to one in five posts. Central government funding has been cut by 30% in cash-terms alone – and a lot more in real-terms. Many services have faced equipment shortages, under-staffed control rooms and insufficient protective gear, with off-duty firefighters routinely recalled to work during extreme incidents.

This under-investment is impacting response to climate change incidents. In August of this year, 17 fire and rescue services were drafted in from as far away as Greater Manchester to respond to a wildfire in Holt Heath, Dorset. Many firefighters responding to the incident did not have specialist wildfire PPE, putting firefighters at increased risk of heat stroke, exhaustion, and burns. In 2022, when temperatures hit 40 degrees in London, 39 fire engines in the city sat empty because there were not enough firefighters to crew them.

This year’s Local Government Settlement from the Treasury has set the fire and rescue service on the course for more cuts. Modelling by the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has shown that another £102 million could be cut to make up for the shortfall in budgets, leaving fire services less capable of responding to major incidents.

This is not a sustainable or safe model for climate resilience.

We are therefore calling on the government to use the Budget and subsequent funding rounds to prioritise public safety and climate adaptation:

1. Significant new central government funding for the fire and rescue service, to ensure sufficient firefighters, emergency fire control staff and specialist resources to meet wildfire and flooding risks.

2. A statutory duty for fire services in England to respond to flooding, consistent with the arrangements that already exist in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.

3. A UK-wide wildfire resilience strategy, developed with the Fire Brigades Union and other stakeholders, ensuring consistent standards for planning, training, and response.

As global leaders meet at COP30, we urge you to act decisively to provide the investment, strategy and leadership that firefighters and the communities they protect urgently need to tackle the realities of climate change.

We look forward to your response.

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