This guide has been produced by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) to support housing professionals, and the organisations they work for, to understand and take action to manage and mitigate the risks posed by wildfires to their homes and residents.
Wildfire risk across the UK
Wildfires cause significant harm across the UK. They can cause a loss of life, destroy homes, negatively affect health, and lead to significant social and economic detriment.
There is very little data on the number of homes at risk of wildfires in England, and no data on building-level measures to help manage wildfire risk. However, fire and rescue services attended over 360,000 wildfire incidents in England over the 12 years from 2009-10 to 2020-21, an average of over 30,000 incidents per year. Of these, the majority took place in built-up areas and gardens.
The risk of wildfires is higher in hot, dry weather. Academic research suggests that the very high risk of wildfire across the UK in 2022, described in box one, was made six times more likely by climate change.
In July 2022, the UK experienced the hottest heatwave on record. Temperatures peaked at over 40°C in London, with temperatures well in excess of 30°C recorded elsewhere in the country.
These temperatures created the ideal conditions for wildfire. They caused a record number of large wildfires and resulted in a 500 per cent increase in 999 calls.
In Wennington, a village in Havering, East London, 17 homes were destroyed by a wildfire that spread across 40 hectares by moving along marshland adjacent to the development.
In the same week, wildfires broke out across Norfolk, destroying five homes in Brancaster Staithe and resulting in the evacuation of dozens of others. One of the fires started in a field and spread ‘like a bush fire’, according to a local resident whose home was destroyed.
Events like these do not just destroy homes, possessions, and lives, but they generate significant knock-on health impacts, such as through the impacts of fire on air quality. Smoke is the most significant threat to public health from wildfires. One fire on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester, in June 2018, exposed 4.5 million people to unsafe particulates in the week that followed.
The risks posed from wildfires are therefore already with us, and housing providers need to be prepared to act.
This matters because the unprecedented July 2022 heatwave will increasingly become more common. In 2025, the government’s statutory advisor on climate change, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), notified the government that the country needed to be better adapted to global warming in excess of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Many scientists now believe this level of warming to be inevitable.
In a world 2°C hotter, more impactful, more frequent, and increasingly unprecedented extreme weather will occur. Exceptionally hot, dry summers will become unexceptional. This will lead to an increase in wildfire risk in the future (see box two for some facts and figures).
The CCC has stated that the chance of an officially defined heatwave occurring doubles from a 40 per cent chance each year in the 1981 to 2010 climate, to close to an 80 per cent chance each year under a climate that is 2°C hotter than preindustrial levels.
In a world that is 2°C hotter, the frequency of days with ‘very high’ fire danger in the UK will double compared to preindustrial levels.
According to the CCC, there will be almost a trebling of days with conditions favourable for wildfires in the peak wildfire month of July from three days per year on average in a 1981 to 2010 climate, to approximately eight days per year for the UK as whole.
The wildfire season will become longer, starting earlier and extending into autumn.
According to a team of academic experts, this means that there is an ‘urgent need’ to reduce people’s exposure to the growing threat of future fire weather events compounded with hot and dry conditions.
As organisations that exist to provide people with warm, safe, and secure homes, housing providers need to be aware of the risks from wildfire. Where appropriate, and informed by a risk-based analysis, they need to take action to ensure the homes and communities they serve are protected from these risks. This includes taking preventative action, ensuring homes and residents are prepared, and working in partnership with other organisations at a local level to manage risk, increase preparedness, and develop resilience.
What this guidance covers
This guide has been produced by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) to support housing providers, and the professionals that work for them, to do this.
The guide is focused on four parts of the sixfold Integrated Emergency Management (IEM) framework of emergency preparedness: anticipation, assessment, prevention, preparation. It does this across six substantive chapters, covering data and risk; local partnership working; strategic asset management and maintenance; and supporting residents. We have also included some useful links and resources in an appendix.
What this guidance does not cover
This guide is intended to help you identify and respond to risk, especially in relation to wildfire anticipation, assessment, prevention, and preparation.
It does not cover the actions housing providers should take during and after a wildfire event, which are defined as final two pillars of the IEM framework of emergency preparedness: response and recovery.
Lastly, the guidance does not cover good practice in planning or development, or current planning policy for new homes. Updated policy and guidance on planning and development is in progress by the government and other organisations, and this guidance therefore focuses on supporting you with the links between wildfires and existing homes and residents.
Housing providers should also have regard to any future government policy or guidance as it develops in the future, especially in relation to the National Planning Policy Framework. We will update this guidance periodically with links to new policies or guidance as they become available.
Ways to integrate this guidance into your existing practice
If you want to create one, the information in this guide can inform the production of an organisation level wildfire preparedness plan or strategy.
It can also support you to update any other emergency plans you have to include information about how your organisation can be prepared for and respond to wildfire risk, including emergency communications strategies and protocols. If you do create a plan, ensuring that it is dynamic, reviewed and updated regularly, and with clear ownership is important.
Lastly, you could consider using the information in this guide to help inform wider, more holistic climate risk assessments for your organisation. Wildfires exist alongside other climate risks, especially heatwaves, flooding, drought, storms, and many others, and housing providers will benefit from considering these risks holistically for their homes, rather than treating them as isolated risks that are not co-dependent.
