Wildfire Is a National Risk. Britain Treats It Like a Local One

Quick summary

• Fire services told Parliament that wildfire is now a national resilience risk, not a seasonal rural nuisance.

• Responsibility is split across departments with no coherent national framework; local partnerships hold it together but are under-resourced.

• Rural fire services are stretched: North Yorkshire faces a projected 25% cut in central funding while demand climbs.

• The cross-government strategy the fire services want is one the Moorland Association backs, provided it resources the land managers who respond first.

Across August and September 2025, the Langdale Moor fire burned through the North York Moors. It covered up to 25 square kilometres, drove down into the peat where fires smoulder and reignite for weeks on end, and posed a direct risk to critical national infrastructure at RAF Fylingdales.

North Yorkshire's firefighters held the line while still answering every other emergency call across one of England's largest rural counties.

When they wrote up what they had learned, their first conclusion was not about hoses or helicopters.

"Wildfire should be considered an escalating national resilience risk," North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service told Parliament's wildfire inquiry, "rather than a seasonal rural issue".

Having just fought one of the largest wildfires in England's recorded history, they chose to talk about the system behind them.

Nobody is in charge

The clearest account of the gap came from the Peak District Fire Operations Group, a long-standing partnership of fire services, land managers and public bodies. Its verdict was blunt: "Policy is fragmented, and responsibility for wildfire is spread across departments".

The consequence is a serious risk held together by local goodwill. "Wildfire resilience in England currently depends on locally driven partnerships operating without a coherent national framework," the group wrote.

"A step-change is required in policy, coordination and investment." Those partnerships, it added, are "effective but under-resourced," carrying a responsibility that belongs to the whole country with no leadership structure or dedicated funding behind them.

The National Fire Chiefs Council said the same from the top of the profession.

Responsibility for wildfire, it noted, is spread across Defra, the Forestry Commission and the housing and communities department, and policies affecting wildfire risk are still being developed in one department "without considering the fire safety consequences in a holistic way".

The services carrying it are stretched thin

This fragmentation lands on fire services that are already under strain, and rural ones most of all.

North Yorkshire set out the arithmetic. It faces a projected 25% reduction in central government funding even as climate-driven incidents multiply, and it fights wildfire on a budget shaped by a national formula that distributes money "predominantly on population-based indicators".

A sparsely populated county with vast, fire-prone uplands is funded as though risk followed people rather than fuel. The service's ask is a reform that gives "greater weight to rurality, geographic scale, infrastructure vulnerability and climate-related wildfire risk."

The structural problem sits beneath the budget lines. As the NFCC pointed out, fighting wildfire "is not a specifically funded FRS capability" at all. It is absorbed into the general duty to put out fires, paid for from core budgets that have seen the national firefighter workforce shrink by a quarter since 2008.

Larger fires, on more fuel, are being fought by fewer crews on money that was never set aside for the task.

The fix they all point to

What is striking about these submissions is that they do not only diagnose. They converge on the same prescription.

The Peak District group called on government to "establish a cross-government wildfire framework," to "provide national coordination, strategy and funding," and to "recognise and support regional partnerships as key delivery mechanisms".

The NFCC proposed the machinery to do it: a strategic coordination group "jointly led and owned" by the housing and communities department and Defra, drawing in partner agencies, and charged with setting "a strategic plan for the UK".

A threat this size needs a named owner, a written strategy, and funding that follows the risk. None of the three exists today.

Where the Moorland Association stands

On this, the Moorland Association is not a dissenting voice but a supporting one. A wildfire strategy for the country is exactly what the uplands need, and we urge the Committee to recommend it.

We would add the piece the fire services point to but cannot supply themselves. Much of the capacity that contains rural wildfire is privately held: the land managers, keepers, tracks, water points and trained staff that reach many fires first and were on the line at Langdale.

A plan that coordinates the public agencies but overlooks that capacity will have organised only half the response. Our submission argues that policy should build on those managers and partnerships rather than regulate them out of existence.

The recommendation we would put to the Committee is therefore specific:

• Establish one jointly owned cross-government wildfire strategy, led by Defra and the housing and communities department.

• Name a single accountable lead for wildfire resilience, so the risk stops falling between departments.

• Fund the regional fire partnerships that currently hold the system together on borrowed time.

• Reform fire service funding so it reflects rural and climate risk, not population alone.

• Recognise land managers as formal delivery partners within the framework.

Britain has the people to fight these fires. What it lacks is a plan to back them. Langdale will not be the last fire of its kind, and the next one will meet either a coordinated national response or the same patchwork that just held, barely, through the end of one summer.