By Henrietta Appleton, Policy Officer (England)
Defra has announced that it will proceed with the planned changes to the Heather & Grass Burning Regulations 2021 which it consulted on in the Spring/early Summer. This means that the requirement for a licence to burn on deep peat will be extended to Less Favoured Areas, and deep peat will be redefined as more than 30cms. According to Defra’s own statistics this will extend the area covered by the new rules to over 676,000 ha, more than trebling the area currently covered by the regulations.
But will this deliver? One of the points we made in our online response is that no evidence was presented in the consultation to show that the 2021 regulations were having a net benefit to peatland health and ecosystem service provision. Surely it is important that decisions such as this are driven by evidence; and in this regard it is interesting to note that there is no acknowledgement of the number of academics/research institutions that responded to the consultation. Obviously, there is the NE evidence review that accompanied the announcement of the consultation, but this focussed on the effects of managed burning. It did not consider the impact of not burning or cutting on risks such as wildfire, which is the subject of a NERC funded project still to report.
We remain concerned that these further restrictions to vegetation management will not deliver ambitions on nature recovery nor net zero as intended. In particular they will place our precious peatlands at greater risk of extreme wildfire events given climate change predictions such as witnessed in the Goyt and on Langdale. In the worst year ever for wildfires it seems incongruous that government policy could be putting more of our precious peatlands at risk, not less.
We also have issue with the statement that air quality will be improved. It appears to us that Defra and others are conflating the effects of wildfire with managed burning. The impact of wildfires on air quality is a global phenomenon with far reaching impacts Wildfires producing 'witches' brew' of air pollution: UN. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) recognises wildfire as an emergent threat to public health given the toxic pollutants emitted, including PM2.5 which is associated with premature deaths. The 2018 Saddleworth Moor wildfire resulted in PM2.5 concentrations twice the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit, affected up to c4.5 million people and caused a 165% increase in excess mortality - that is c3.5 extra deaths per day (UKHSA).
On a positive note, Defra acknowledges that restoring peatland through rewetting can take time and that during the transition pre-emptive action through creating firebreaks may still be needed – including through burning – and we welcome the new research ground for a licence application.
But this means that the focus will be on the licensing process which they have acknowledged needs improvement. It wasn’t working for land managers or Defra. The new guidance and online form will be on the website by 30th September, so we look forward to seeing the revisions and updates that hopefully reduce the complexity that currently surrounds an application and the consenting process. But we are concerned that these licences will only be granted “in very limited circumstances” relegating burning to a last resort.
In conclusion, these changes are disappointing as they ignore the scientific evidence of wildfire risk and the experiential evidence that is the reality of the 2025 wildfire season and instead are seemingly based on a long running campaign to bring heather burning to an end.