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The government will look at banning disposable barbecues as wildfires continue to rage across the UK, Andy Burnham has said.

Disposable barbecues have been the cause of a number of serious fires over the last few years, but campaigners were critical of the prime minister’s failure to link those fires more broadly to the climate crisis.

Disposable barbecues, which can be carried into public areas, present a number of problems: they remain hot, sometimes for hours, after they are used, making them extremely difficult to dispose of safely, and when they cannot be carried away, people are forced to leave them or place them into bins where they carry on smouldering.

Burying the barbecues, as some try to do, will not stop the danger as these trays of charcoal can reach 450C and will carry on burning underground, where they can still ignite fires long after use. On beaches, the buried coals and metal grills are also a hazard for walkers, and in fields for farm animals.

Over the last few years they have been identified as the cause of a number of serious fires including:

• Macclesfield, Cheshire, July 2026: a large woodland fire that was tackled by dozens of firefighters. Cheshire fire and rescue service said a discarded barbecue was the probable cause

• Three separate fires in one day around London, July 2026: in Feltham, 6 hectares of heathland close to houses were damaged. The London fire brigade urged people not to use disposable barbecues and to properly extinguish cigarettes after crews tackled three grass fires.

• The Trossachs, Scotland, May 2025: covered 2 hectares in the Glen Finglas region of the national park. Glen Finglas is the biggest Woodland Trust site in the UK. The barbecue understood to have sparked that fire was found with a burger still on the grill.