Disposable barbecue ban under consideration as drought and extreme heat grip England and Wales
The UK government is considering a ban on disposable barbecues amid a summer of drought-driven wildfires, according to Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester. The prime minister separately told reporters that single-use grills had been behind a number of recent blazes and that people should not use them "at this moment in time" (BBC News).
Burnham did not specify whether the government was weighing a restriction on the sale of disposable barbecues or limitations on their use. The ambiguity leaves open whether ministers are contemplating a retail-level prohibition, a use-order regime, or both. Fire chiefs have previously issued warnings about the devices, and some retailers have already voluntarily withdrawn them from shelves (BBC News).
The discussions come against severe meteorological and hydrological conditions. Nearly three-quarters of England and all of Wales have been officially declared in drought, creating conditions rife for fire to spread. The Met Office has issued a rare amber extreme heat warning for Thursday, with temperatures expected to peak in the mid-to-high 30s across the Midlands and south-east of England and a high of 38C possible (BBC News).
Political pressure has been building across party lines. Labour MP Jon Pearce, who represents High Peak, launched a campaign reported by the Manchester Evening News calling for retailers to suspend sales of disposable barbecues amid huge wildfires in Greater Manchester (Jon Pearce, Facebook). A separate Labour MP wrote to large retailers urging them to halt sales of the grills for the remainder of the summer (BBC News).
Conservative MP Alison Hume, who represents Scarborough and Whitby, reiterated her calls for a public ban on disposable barbecues after the latest wildfire on the North York Moors (Yorkshire Post). The National Farmers Union has called on local councils to issue public space protection orders restricting the use of disposable barbecues in public areas (BBC News).
The Green Party of England and Wales has gone further in its criticism, stating that a disposable barbecue had been left discarded amid the Greater Manchester fires and criticising Burnham's response to the situation (Green Party, Instagram).
The policy landscape here is fragmented across several layers of governance, which matters for what a "ban" would actually entail. Drought declarations are statutory instruments administered by the Environment Agency in England and by Natural Resources Wales. Public space protection orders, the tool the NFU is urging councils to deploy, sit with local authorities under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 and allow councils to restrict activities in defined public spaces without recourse to primary legislation. A national prohibition on sale, by contrast, would require either ministerial regulation or parliamentary action. Burnham's reference to government-level consideration suggests something beyond the local PSPO route, but the lack of specificity about whether sale or use is the target leaves the policy direction genuinely unclear.
Fire and rescue services in England operate under local authority oversight, while in Wales they fall to Welsh ministers. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own separate structures, and any UK-government ban would need to be scoped carefully to devolved responsibilities. Drought conditions have been declared for England and Wales; no equivalent declaration features in the verified reporting for Scotland or Northern Ireland.
The retail response adds another variable. With some chains already acting voluntarily, a formal ban would catch those who have not followed suit, but the political gain for ministers lies partly in being seen to act decisively rather than in the mechanics of enforcement. The prime minister's direct public comment that people should not use the grills "at this moment in time" signals that the government is comfortable making the case publicly even before any formal restriction is in place.
