The Conservative government committed in its July 2023 national climate adaptation programme to run a wildfire risk programme in England from 2023 to 2027, adapting land management to fire risk. The programme was never implemented. The Labour government confirmed, in response to a freedom of information request by campaigner Guy Shrubsole, that the commitment "was made by the previous government but was not brought into effect." Two governments, zero action, and it took Britain burning this summer for anyone to notice. The gap between announcement and implementation is not a bureaucratic footnote — it is the gap that kills. England experienced record-breaking wildfires this summer after extreme heat and drought. A wildfire in Stourbridge, West Midlands, spread into residential areas in August. In Suffolk, a fire burned close to the Sizewell B nuclear power station and destroyed vast areas of a protected nature reserve. The programme that was supposed to prepare for exactly this scenario existed only on paper. The equipment deficit is equally damning. New data obtained by the Country Land and Business Association shows more than half of the 29 fire services that responded to information requests had no wildfire-specific personal protective equipment. Standard particle-filtering respirators do not protect against carbon monoxide, which is heavily present in wildfire smoke. Standard PPE can overheat firefighters or force them to remove protection entirely, exposing them to heat, smoke, and radiation. Suffolk fire and rescue — which dealt with the fire near Sizewell B — was among the services without wildfire PPE. Training numbers are equally thin. In Cleveland, just five staff — 1.2% — were qualified to give tactical advice or command wildfire operations. In Cheshire, only 8.62% of employees were trained for wildfire operations. The Fire Brigades Union is calling for correct PPE and adequate training for all members combating wildfires. General secretary Steve Wright called for "better land management, stronger public awareness campaigns and long-term prevention measures." The policy failure follows a familiar pattern in UK climate adaptation: announce, neglect, react. Prime Minister Andy Burnham convened an emergency Cobra meeting after the Stourbridge fire and temporarily banned disposable barbecue sales — a move critics called too little too late. Shrubsole called for re-wetting peat bogs, restoring ponds in farmers' fields, and ending the practice of grouse moor owners setting fire to moorland. Alistair Carmichael, chair of the Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee, said the failure "begs further serious questions about whether this summer's wildfires could have looked different with more resources on the ground." The government now says it has "made wildfire preparedness a government priority" and is convening a summit with fire and rescue service partners. It cited £100 million previously allocated to upgrade national resilience assets and referenced work with land managers on peatland restoration, firebreaks, and other adaptations. But the summit is being organised after the crisis, not before it. The £100 million was existing spending, not new allocation for the scrapped programme. The structural problem is not that wildfires are surprising — the 2023 adaptation programme existed precisely because they were predicted. The structural problem is that both major parties treated preparedness as a document to publish rather than a programme to run. The costs of that neglect are now being paid by firefighters without proper gear, communities near nuclear infrastructure, and destroyed nature reserves.
