Fire and rescue services in England and Wales have tackled 716 wildfires so far in 2026, a figure that already equals the combined annual totals recorded in 2021, 2023 and 2024, with July the busiest month for wildfires on record. The surge follows 2025, the worst year for wildfires since records began, when close to 48,000 hectares of countryside burned.
James Wright, an Exmoor farmer and Conservative campaigner, has published figures obtained from Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service under freedom of information laws that he says expose a growing weakness in rural fire cover across West Somerset, Exmoor and Mid Devon.
The data shows that while the service's full-time fire engines were available almost 99 per cent of the time in 2024, its on-call fleet, which forms the backbone of cover across the countryside, stood at around 80 per cent. At any given moment last year, roughly one in five on-call fire engines could not respond, and the reason recorded was almost always a shortage of crew rather than a mechanical fault.
The gaps are widest in the places closest to the moor. On-call availability at Dulverton fell to 69 per cent in 2024 and at Wiveliscombe to around 56 per cent, while at Crediton in Mid Devon it dropped to 62 per cent. The reserve second appliances that sustained wildfires depend upon, when crews must be relieved over many days, are thinner still.
Wright argues that recent government action, does not reach the problem. Ministers announced a £97 million upgrade of national fire assets this summer, described as the largest in almost twenty years, alongside five specialist wildfire teams. Not one is based in the South West; they are hosted in Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Northumberland, London and South Wales.
“Fires have been burning across the country all summer. These figures ought to worry anyone who lives in the countryside. Last year one in five of our on-call fire engines could not turn out, and nearly always it was because there was nobody to crew them.” Said Wright "There is not a single wildfire team serving the South West, and none of this money reaches the crewing problem on the ground. Put proper funding into on-call firefighters now, before we are counting the cost in burnt moorland, dead stock and lost homes. We cannot afford to be an afterthought."
Wright is calling on the Government to fund a targeted drive to recruit and retain on-call firefighters, and to place dedicated wildfire capability within reach of the South West before the next heatwave.
