Working in partnership with local actors to reduce wildfire risk

Key takeaways

• Consider identifying and collaborating with any other housing providers, wildfire strategies, local fire groups, and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) to develop your understanding of wildfire risk in specific places, and to support multi-agency prevention and mitigation efforts.
• Consider developing relationships with local fire and rescue services, and local landowners and managers, in areas that are at heightened wildfire risk where you have homes. 
• Consider conducting a stakeholder mapping exercise to identify any other key stakeholders that you could collaborate with on prevention and mitigation in areas that are at heightened wildfire risk where you have homes.
• Nurture these relationships and collaborations to improve your understanding of risk, share relevant data that can support local prevention, mitigation, and response, and improve the management of Home Ignition Zones around your homes. 

Wildfires involve complex social, ecological, and geographical phenomena. As the guide shows, housing providers can take action to protect their homes, residents, and communities from wildfire risk. 

However, housing providers are also at their most effective when they work in partnership with other organisations. Identifying and mitigating the risk of harm and damage from wildfires is also best accomplished in partnership with different organisations.

Housing providers can therefore take steps to work with other local actors on wildfire. This chapter sets out some of the ways that housing providers can approach this.

The importance of place-based partnerships for addressing wildfires

Wildfire risk is typically greatest in specific places, such as at the Rural Urban Interface. Places that have heightened wildfire risk benefit from multi-agency partnerships formed of local stakeholders, working together to protect the community. There are several forms of partnership that housing providers could be looking to initiate or join. 

Local housing partnerships

Housing providers that own homes in specific places are usually experienced at working together. You might work together to commission services, or to deliver government grant funding programmes, such as the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund. At the same time, the ongoing process of devolution and local government reorganisation is creating more opportunities for partnership working between housing providers at a local level. 

If you are a housing provider that owns homes within an area of heightened wildfire risk, your first step could be to understand if there are any other housing providers with homes in the same place. This can include housing associations, stock-holding local authorities, and private landlords of different kinds (including private landlords that operate build-to-rent models, and/or that let homes at below-market rent). Housing providers that own homes in areas at heightened risk of wildfire can then come together to discuss their approaches, policies, and strategies, and to share information and intelligence. 

Wildfire prevention and mitigation strategies and local fire groups

The NFCC recommends that in addition to wildfire risk assessments, which are owned by individual fire and rescue services, local areas should develop wildfire prevention and mitigation strategies and local fire groups. This requires partnership working between local agencies, landowners, housing providers, communities, fire and rescue services, and other stakeholders in a specific place. They recommend that local wildfire strategies should focus on prevention, protection, preparedness, and response. 

As a housing provider, you can try to identify if any local wildfire prevention and mitigation strategies and/or fire groups exist, and if they do, contact them to see if you can be a collaborating partner (see box five for an example). You could do this unilaterally, or – if you have established a group of local housing providers with homes in the locality in question – nominate a representative from your group to become involved in the strategy. 

Much of the information you hold about your homes, residents, and communities – described elsewhere in this guide – will be very useful to the development and implementation of these strategies. Equally, being a part of these partnerships can support you to obtain more accurate and nuanced information about the risk to your homes (see Understanding wildfire data and risk) and find more efficient ways of supporting your residents (see Supporting residents with wildfires). 

Local resilience forums

In addition to local wildfire strategies and fire groups, Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) are multi-agency partnerships made up of key local representatives. They are formed of: 

• Category 1 responders, as defined by the Civil Contingencies Act. This includes emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, and others. 
• Category 2 responders, which includes public utility companies and the Highways Agency. They have a responsibility to cooperate with Category 1 responders and share relevant information with the LRF as a whole. 

LRFs aim to plan and prepare for localised incidents and emergencies, including (but not limited to) wildfires. They cover the whole of England and Wales. Similar groups exist for Scotland (Regional Resilience Partnerships) and Northern Ireland (Emergency Preparedness Groups). 

As a housing provider, you may be able to join your LRF. Even if you can’t, as a local stakeholder that owns homes and provides support to residents, you should explore how you (or a representative from your group of housing providers) can support, and learn from, the activities of your LRF. This is true both for wildfires, and more generally. 

Critical local stakeholders

Fire and rescue services

Whether or not you are able to get involved in local wildfire strategies, fire groups, and LRFs, you should consider establishing a good working relationship with your local fire and rescue service. Responding to and extinguishing wildfires falls under the general remit of local fire and rescue services, supported by advisors coordinated through NFCC National Resilience. 

Many housing providers already have good pre-existing relationships with local fire and rescue services. For wildfires, these relationships will always be mutually beneficial. As a housing provider, you will benefit from their expertise about the best ways to prevent, prepare for, and respond to wildfires in specific places. You can also work together to ensure your residents receive accurate information about the risks of wildfires, including partnering to deliver all of the information and activities discussed in Supporting residents with wildfires. A good relationship with local fire and rescue services can also be critical when wildfires occur, and you can consider appointing a designated lead to liaise with fire and rescue services about wildfire risk and preparedness. 

In addition, as an organisation that owns and manages homes, as well as wider assets in the community, you may have information that could be valuable to share with local fire and rescue services. This information can inform their response planning, as well as their wildfire-specific risk assessments, fire operations planning, or fire growth modelling planning. This can include up-to-date information on: 

• Residents that may have wildfire-relevant vulnerabilities or needs, including their address. 
• Residents that may not be able to evacuate themselves in the event of a wildfire, including their address. 
• Local assets that are vital for local fire and rescue services during wildfires, which can include: 
  
  • The location of access and turning points, including roads, driveways, and tracks. 
  • Location of fire hydrants. 
  • Information about local flora, especially on new housing developments where the information may be more readily available from ecologists. 
  • The location of any stores of combustible materials, such as LPG bottles and firewood. 

When considering this, you will have to adhere to relevant policies and practices around data sharing, such as GDPR. Any sharing of resident information with local fire and rescue services will typically require explicit, informed, and recorded consent from the resident. 

Local landowners and land managers

Local landowners and land managers are your second critical stakeholder group when looking to identify and mitigate wildfire risk. This can include local farmers, and the owners of any scrubland, heathland, woodland, or moorland adjacent to your homes.

Usually, actions you might want to take (or encourage residents to take) as part of securing the Home Ignition Zone will not be possible without partnering with local landowners. This is because the extent of the Home Ignition Zone will likely cross the boundaries of the property into private land. You can therefore try to work with local landowners and land managers to ensure any necessary preventative works are undertaken within the Home Ignition Zone, which will necessarily include a conversation about how to fund and finance any works collaboratively. 

Beyond the Home Ignition Zone, consider developing good relationships with any other local landowners in the area. You can benefit from the deep knowledge that landowners have about the vegetation and ecological composition of their land. They can deepen your understanding of risk by informing you about local land use patterns, management strategies, and wildfire prevention initiatives. They can also support you to be prepared, and give you precious early warning if a wildfire is starting. 

Identifying local landowners can be challenging. If one exists, local landowners should be part of a local fire group or wildfire prevention and mitigation strategy group. In other cases, you may have to go door-to-door, or ask around locally. However, it is worth the effort for the knowledge, experience, and collaboration that you can benefit from. 

Finally, be mindful that local landowners may also be public or charitable bodies, such as the Woodland Trust, Wildlife Trusts, or National Trust. Working with them can benefit your work in the same way that working with local private landowners will. 

Other stakeholders

Depending on the specific area or place that is at heightened risk of wildfire, there may be other stakeholders that you would benefit from engaging with. You can undertake a broader stakeholder mapping exercise to identify any of these stakeholders, and consider how you can work together. As before, many will be part of local fire groups, wildfire prevention and mitigation strategies, or LRFs. They can include, but are not limited to: 

• The Environment Agency
• National Parks
• The Forestry Commission (or devolved equivalents)
• Natural England (or devolved equivalents)
• Crown Estates
• Ministry of Defence
• The Moorland Association
• The Country Land and Business Association
• The National Farmers Union
• Utilities and energy networks, especially water and sewerage companies, gas distribution networks, and electricity networks (transmission and distribution). 
• The Highways Agency. 

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