UK weighs disposable barbecue ban as wildfires surge
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- Andy Burnham said the government will examine banning disposable barbecues as wildfires continue to rage across the UK, prompting criticism from campaigners that the prime minister failed to link the blazes more broadly to the climate crisis.
- A July blaze at Cannock Chase burned an area the size of a football field in Sherbrook Valley, a special conservation area home to adders, toads and ground-nesting nightjars; Staffordshire council officials identified a disposable barbecue as the cause.
- Disposable barbecues were blamed for a Macclesfield woodland fire in July 2026 tackled by dozens of firefighters, three separate one-day London grass fires including 6 hectares of Feltham heathland, and a 2-hectare Trossachs blaze in May 2025 where crews found a barbecue with a burger still on the grill.
- Labour MP Jon Pearce (High Peak, Derbyshire, 50 miles from Cannock Chase) is drafting a partial-restriction bill that would exempt portable barbecues taken away after use, arguing blanket bans have enforcement pitfalls.
- Government research published last year recorded more than 1,600 fires caused by barbecues in England from 2020 to 2024, though it did not specify disposable units; cause was listed as unknown for the majority of the nearly 4,500 total wildfires logged.
- Greenpeace political campaigner Angharad Hopkinson said Burnham's convening of Cobra must be matched with a long-term plan to end fossil fuel dependence, calling climate change "the ultimate driver" of the conditions fueling the blazes.
- The National Farmers' Union is now calling for a ban, though government ministers have historically been set against such measures despite disposable barbecue coals reaching 450C and continuing to smoulder even when buried.
Why it matters: With conservation groups warning that 2025/26 will surpass last year's record wildfire year and the NFU formally demanding action, the government's response tests whether ministers legislate or rely on public messaging. Retail and waste-management liability for the 450C-burning disposables also comes into sharper focus: the proposed partial ban would shift responsibility back toward retailers while leaving a loophole for portable units taken home.
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