Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Khan of Burnley on 12 June (HL Deb 324GC), which stakeholders they have consulted with in respect of the wildfire policy scoping work; and what plans they have to consult with landowners, land managers, and wildfire experts.

The Government is taking a joined-up approach to enhancing resilience to wildfires. Improvements are being driven in wildfire data collection through the introduction of the new Fire and Rescue Data Platform – a new incident reporting tool used by Fire and Rescue Services. This will introduce a formal definition for ‘wildfire’ for the purpose of fire incident reporting, which will enable Government to collect official data on the number of incidents and publish official statistics. These improvements will allow us to track data trends, the concentration of wildfire events and provide a solid evidence base for future wildfire policy and operational planning.

Prior to the transfer of fire functions to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), the Home Office convened a number of stakeholder workshops with the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra), its agencies, and other stakeholders to identify policy options for addressing wildfire risk. This included a workshop, led by Defra, on land management issues. The outcomes of this work are currently being considered.

Officials continue to engage actively with landowners, land managers and wildfire specialists through established forums including the England and Wales Wildfire Forum (EWWF).