Wildfires are on the rise in Britain. So how do we protect ourselves?

For weeks this summer, firefighters have battled flames across Langdale Moor in the North York Moors National Park. The fire has scorched more than 2,000 acres – about 10 square miles – inland between Scarborough and Whitby, and at the time of writing is still alight. Smoke travelled more than 30 miles, drifting into York, where residents were told to keep windows closed. Buried World War II munitions on the moors exploded in the heat.

More than 46,000 hectares of land have burned across the UK so far this year – a national record, equivalent to an area the size of Nottingham. Across Europe, more than one million hectares have gone up in smoke; the worst wildfire season since records began.

According to the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), fire and rescue services in England and Wales have already responded to 996 wildfires so far this year, as of Thursday, 4 September 2025. In comparison, in 2022 (previously the worst year for wildfires), there were 994 incidents across the entire year.

Group commander Dave Swallow, the NFCC’s lead wildfire tactical adviser, tells Big Issue the shift is undeniable. “We used to see significant wildfire years every nine or 10 years,” he says. 

“Since 2018, they’ve been coming around every two or three years.”

‘Quite often we don’t have water’

With over 20 years of firefighting behind him, Swallow describes wildfires as unlike anything else firefighters face. “You’re in 30°C heat,” he explains, referring to recent summer fires, “then you’ve got our fire kit on top. It’s real arduous conditions, very difficult. And in a large number of cases, you’re miles away from roads.” 

Crews can often hike for an hour carrying their gear before they even reach the flames, as appliances can’t traverse the landscape. When they arrive, water is scarce. “We quite often don’t have water so we end up having to use things like beaters and hand tools,” Swallow says. “Beaters are long-handled tools with a flat piece of rubber at the end, and you beat the ground to suffocate the fire. We use rakes and mattocks to scrape away vegetation and leave bare earth, creating fire breaks. 

“Sometimes we can bring in an all-terrain vehicle with a small water tank and a fogging unit, basically a pressure washer that sprays a fine mist.” 

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

In contrast to the images of planes dropping water on vast wildfires in California or Spain, British firefighters are often trying to contain blazes with little more than hand tools.

And there’s no fire without smoke. Inside homes, crews wear breathing apparatus; on the moors, that’s not an option. The compressed-air cylinders only last half an hour and carrying them across miles of rough terrain isn’t feasible. Instead, firefighters rely on lighter dust masks that filter only some particles. 

“Ideally, you don’t want to be working in the smoke, but inevitably there are always changes in wind movement,” says Swallow. 

“You usually end up in it at some point. You just can’t have the same level of respiratory protection that you could have at a building.

“In a building fire, it doesn’t generally spread from building to building. In a wildfire, the fire obviously can just keep growing and growing and spreading out. That then starts to stretch resources. It’s a completely different thought process and mindset.”

Read more:

• Luke Pollard: Pedestrian approach to climate crisis embarrasses Britain
• UK ‘not prepared’ for more frequent wildfires as climate change accelerates
• Why climate change hits women harder than men

‘We won’t have enough resources in place’

The NFCC has rolled out a basic wildfire training package to fire services, but crews remain primarily trained for building fires. Specialist resources are patchy. Swallow points out that wildfire can be “just classed as business as usual” and funded out of existing budgets. London, scarred by its wildfire outbreak in 2022, announced in August a £40 million investment from the mayor’s office in equipment and training. Elsewhere, the picture is mixed.

Fire and rescue services in England responded to 600,185 incidents in total last year – an increase of 100,000 compared to a decade ago. Yet over the same period, firefighter numbers have fallen by 25%, the equivalent of 11,000 full-time posts.

Last month, more than 100 firefighters tackled a blaze at Holt Heath near Wimborne, Dorset; dozens were called on when fire spread on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. Each new fire adds to the growing strain on already stretched crews.

“There’s going to have to be some very difficult decisions made by commanders on the ground about losing property,” Swallow warns. “We won’t have enough resources in place in the early stages of an incident to protect all the properties we want to protect, because the fire is moving so fast.” In 2022, dozens of homes in London and beyond were lost this way.

That strain is already visible on the ground. Last month, on 27 August, North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service requested additional support through the National Resilience Fire Control to tackle the Langdale Moor blaze. Ten fire appliances were dispatched from across the country, including crews from the London Fire Brigade. Late last month LFB deployed 27 firefighters and five officers with five appliances and a specialist wildfire vehicle – travelling more than 200 miles to reinforce the operation. The long-distance mobilisation highlights how dependent regional services can be on outside support when major wildfires break out.

‘Vegetation is much more flammable than in the past’

Professor Stefan Doerr, who leads the Centre for Wildfire Research at Swansea University, has studied fires from Portugal to Canada. 

“Urban firefighting is absolutely outstanding in the UK,” he says. “But there is in places a lack of knowledge how to deal with wildfires – and a lack of equipment as well, because the urban firefighting equipment differs very dramatically from wildland firefighting.”

Doerr explains that the British landscape is becoming more flammable for a combination of factors. “We have seen quite severe, extended droughts in recent years. But another very important aspect is that we’ve seen our cultural landscape changing – a reduction in management and in grazing across many areas, and that means we now have vegetation in the landscape that is much more flammable than it would have been in the past. Especially heather and gorse. They don’t even need to be particularly dry to burn,” Doerr notes.

Climate change means winters are warmer and wetter, encouraging vegetation growth. Summers are hotter and drier, leaving more fuel ready to burn. Managing that fuel load is fraught with politics. Controlled burns were once a common way to reduce heather and scrub, but government restrictions now limit their use, citing damage to carbon stores.

Because beneath the vegetation lies another layer of risk: peat. Britain holds more blanket bog than almost anywhere else in the world, storing vast amounts of carbon in its soil. “If the fires burn into peat, it’s a big problem,” Doerr warns. 

Unlike grass or heather, which can regrow within years, peat can take centuries to recover, and it’s also much harder to extinguish if on fire. Fires on peatlands, which are carbon-rich, can almost double fire-driven carbon emissions: the carbon released into the atmosphere can undo years of emissions cuts in a single season. 

‘Smoke from rural fires often goes undetected’

When vegetation burns, the smoke carries dangerous particulate matter (PM) into the air – dust, ash and soot that can travel for miles and harm human health. Because these particles are so small, some less than 2.5 micrometres across (PM2.5), they can be inhaled deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, lodging in the heart, brain and other organs. Long-term exposure is linked to asthma, heart disease and premature death. Children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are most at risk.

Dr Maria Val Martin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Sheffield, has devoted her career to the study of how fires change the air that we breathe. 

“It’s a combination of climate change, land management, and human activity,” she says of the UK’s wildfire increase. “Most UK wildfires are still started by people.”

Her work tracks how wildfire smoke travels and the damage it does. “Even relatively small fires can cause dangerous spikes in PM2.5,” she tells Big Issue. 

On 9 October 2023, a controlled burn in the Peak District led to PM2.5 levels in Sheffield rising to nearly five times the World Health Organisation limit, despite the fire being more than 15 miles away.

UK law currently requires average PM2.5 concentrations to stay below 20 micrograms per cubic metre. New targets mean England must cut that to 10 micrograms by 2040 and reduce population exposure by 35% compared to 2018 levels.

“The problem is that we’re not monitoring these events properly,” Martin adds. “Most air-quality data in the UK comes from urban sites, meaning smoke from rural fires often goes undetected.”

Without accurate monitoring, she warns, the health consequences of wildfire smoke risk remaining invisible until it is too late.

The national picture

The threat of wildfires is not consistent across Britain. “If you live in the southeast, your peak fire season is actually the summer,” Professor Doerr says. “If you go to Scotland, almost all the fires are in open land, and they tend to be heathland-dominated. If you go to Wales, the fires are heathland and grassland dominated, and the main fire season is April. 

The same applies to Scotland, unless we have a very dry summer like we’ve seen this year.” Each nation faces a different problem, he argues, and “we need to deal with the landscape in different ways.”

While the landscapes vary, the ignition sources are similar. Almost every UK wildfire is caused by people. “In the past, wildfires around the world were largely caused by lightning strikes,” Doerr explains. “But generally speaking, more than 99% of UK wildfires are caused by human ignitions, either intentional or unintentional.” 

That includes arson, sparks from machinery, railway lines, barbecues and even controlled burns that get out of hand.

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU), which represents more than 46,000 farming businesses in England and Wales, says prevention must involve everyone. Vice-president Rachel Hallos urged the public to be “fire-aware” when using shared countryside, adding: “Protecting our farmland means protecting our food, our environment and our rural communities.”

When Langdale Moor was set ablaze this August, it wasn’t just fire crews on the scene. Upland farmers rushed in with water bowsers and tractors. Tom Hind, chief executive of the North York Moors National Park Authority, described the support as “remarkable,” noting that some farmers had travelled from far beyond the immediate area to offer equipment, grazing and stabling.

But the NFU warns farmers cannot face the risk by themselves. “As farmers, we are doing what we can, but this isn’t an issue we can tackle alone,” Hallos said. “It’s vital that government, fire services and local authorities work with us on prevention, education and response.”

A less flammable future?

So what does the future look like for Britain in the coming years?

Doerr cautions against assuming the danger has peaked. “We’ll probably see a few wet years where nobody talks about fire,” he says. “Then we’ll get another very dry spring and summer, with even higher temperatures, and the situation will be worse than this year.”

That uncertainty makes preparation difficult. But some solutions are already on the table. In London, the fire brigade is urging councils and landowners to establish natural fire breaks (strips of less flammable land between housing estates and grassland) to slow the spread of grass fires. In Scotland, Moray Council, hit by its worst ever wildfire this year, has passed a motion calling for urgent national action, including plans for a multi-agency wildfire summit in spring 2026. 

Meanwhile the NFCC warns that Britain needs more coordinated planning, clearer incident definitions, and stronger alliances across government departments and emergency services to reduce wildfire risk.

Scientists point to the land itself. Proactive management, whether through controlled burns, cutting fire breaks or rewetting degraded peat bogs, could make Britain’s landscapes more resilient. But each measure comes with political and financial trade-offs: carbon concerns limit burning on peatlands, while rewilding and restoration schemes require significant investment.

What remains in question is whether the UK’s fire services, land managers and policymakers can move quickly enough. Britain may not yet face the vast infernos of Portugal and California. But in a warming world, every nation has its breaking point – and this summer’s record blazes suggest the UK is edging closer to its own.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Reader-funded since 1991 – Big Issue brings you trustworthy journalism that drives real change.

Every day, our journalists dig deeper, speaking up for those society overlooks.

Could you help us keep doing this vital work? Support our journalism from £5 a month.