Westminster Wildfire Inquiry: Your Evidence is Needed by 15 May

✅ KEY TAKEAWAY: Submit your first-hand evidence to the EFRA wildfire inquiry by 15 May. Your practical, on-the-ground experience is essential to defend active moorland management and prevent severe wildfires.

The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has launched an inquiry into wildfire risk and response.

The Moorland Association is preparing its own response, but it is vital that the Committee also hears directly from members.

The deadline for evidence is 15 May.

Why members should respond

This inquiry is a chance to explain, in practical terms, what is happening on the ground.

The Committee needs to hear from the people who manage fire-prone moors, maintain access and water points, work with Fire and Rescue Services and understand how quickly conditions can change.

A national MA submission is important, but it cannot replace first-hand evidence from individual estates, keepers, farmers, shepherds, contractors and local rural businesses.

Your submission does not need to be long. It does not need to be technical. A few paragraphs from the heart, grounded in your own experience, may be more powerful than a long policy document.

What is the MA saying in its submission?

The MA’s central message is that wildfire policy must move from trying to suppress fires after ignition to reducing their severity before ignition.

Climate change is increasing fire weather, but land management strongly influences whether an ignition becomes a small, controllable surface fire or a landscape-scale emergency.

Our draft response argues that Defra policy should support a practical toolbox: grazing, cutting, mowing, bracken and scrub control, rewetting where feasible, and prescribed winter burning where appropriate.

Different land needs different tools. The policy failure is to remove options before assessing local wildfire risk.

We would welcome your feedback

The MA has prepared an initial draft response. We want it to represent members as clearly and strongly as possible. Please send us any comments, corrections or examples that would make the submission stronger.

Please make your own submission

The most important thing members can do now is make their own submission to the EFRA Committee by 15 May.

There is a 3,000-word limit, but you do not need to use anything like that. A short, direct submission of a few paragraphs may be far more powerful than a long policy paper.

The MA response will cover the national policy arguments. What the Committee also needs is evidence from people who live and work with wildfire risk every day.

Real examples are hugely important

• If you have helped fight a wildfire, say so.

• If you have seen fuel loads build up because management has been restricted, say so.

• If you know of tracks, water points, radios, bowsers, fogging units, beaters, trained staff or local knowledge that helped prevent a fire spreading, say so.

• If controlled winter burning has helped you understand fire behaviour, train staff, work safely with wind and fuel, or support Fire and Rescue Services during wildfire incidents, say so.

• If that capability is now being lost, say so.

We can help

Please do not be put off by the process.

If you would like help shaping your evidence, drafting a short submission, checking tone, or deciding which points to include, please contact us at agilruth@moorlandassociation.org. We will do everything we can to help members make their case clearly and directly.

The Committee needs to hear from real places and real people: keepers, farmers, shepherds, estate staff, contractors, owners, agents and rural businesses.

The MA submission matters, but it cannot replace your own experience.

This is a moment to make the practical countryside case: wildfire prevention starts before ignition, and it starts with the people who know and manage the land.