Essex climate change warning after summer of fires and heat

At Middlewick Ranges in Colchester, grass crunched underfoot and burnt vegetation stretched towards the tree line after two fires tore through the site in just three days. Fifty firefighters tackled the first blaze before around 30 were called to another fire two days later.

Elsewhere across the county, children were sent home as classrooms became too hot, businesses changed their hours and the railways struggled under extreme temperatures.

Network Rail urged people in areas covered by the most serious heat warnings to travel only when “absolutely essential”, warning that trains would run more slowly and delays and cancellations were more likely.

Preliminary UK Health Security Agency figures estimate 2,877 heat-associated deaths in England during exceptional periods of hot weather in May and June, including 2,124 during the June heatwave alone. The agency warned the figures mean 2026 could ultimately report the highest number of heat-associated deaths on record.

Fire - Colchester's Middlewick Ranges suffered two fires in three days this summer (Image: Simon Collyer)

Analysis from the Met Office suggested human-caused climate change was responsible for around 42 per cent of the deaths across both heatwaves.

Professor Jules Pretty, an environmental academic from Essex University and chair of the Essex Climate Action Commission, believes the connection between extreme weather and climate change is increasingly understood.

He said international polling showed more than 80 per cent of people globally now believed climate change was real and caused by fossil fuels and human activity.

“The change over the past six, seven, eight years has been dramatic,” he said, adding people increasingly “want things to be done, but they're not quite sure what can be done.”

He warned continued warming would affect “pretty well every part of the economy”, including food production.

Chair - Professor Jules Pretty, Chair of the Essex Climate Action Commission, believes change in recent years to the climate has been 'dramatic' (Image: Professor Jules Pretty)

Meanwhile, figures obtained from Essex County Fire and Rescue Service through a Freedom of Information request show how significantly outdoor fire numbers have already fluctuated in recent years.

Grassland fires almost doubled from 175 in 2024 to 349 in 2025, while woodland fires increased from 36 to 92.

Hedge fires doubled from 63 to 126, scrubland fires rose from 78 to 153 and park fires increased from 65 to 109.

Grassland fires have previously been even higher, however, with 516 recorded in 2022.

Data - Grassland fires almost doubled from 175 in 2024 to 349 in 2025 (Figures from Essex County Fire and Rescue Service) (Image: Newsquest)

The data alone does not show that climate change caused these individual fires. But the enormous operational pressure faced by firefighters during periods of dry, hot weather is becoming increasingly clear.

Essex Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Roger Hirst said fire crews attended 6,580 incidents between May 25 and August 23, 14 per cent above the previous summer peak in 2022 and 36 per cent above the 2021 to 2025 average.

He said: “The planning assumption is that what happened in the summer was not a one-off in terms of seasonal incident demand.”

Mr Hirst is now consulting residents about council tax funding for policing and the fire service in 2027/28 with a survey which ends on November 11.

Plan - Essex Police Fire and Crime Commissioner Roger Hirst said the assumption for future planning is that the extreme weather this summer was not a 'one-off' (Image: PFCC Roger Hirst)

The Essex Climate Action Commission has helped push climate policy from targets towards practical changes across the county.

Since making more than 100 recommendations in 2021, its work has influenced new strategies covering water, waste and nature recovery, while Essex has invested in renewable energy, greener transport and improving the energy efficiency of homes.

A review of its work identified 64 major impacts between 2020 and 2024, including an Essex tree-planting programme which had planted 400,000 trees, around 600 household solar installations through the Solar Together scheme and investment plans worth £2.5million for regenerative farming and green infrastructure.

“Unless somebody decides to make a change in what they're doing, whether they're a business owner or somebody in the local authority or a third sector charity or us as individuals in our household – unless we decide to do something, nothing will happen,” he said.

“We might just have enough time to stop the worst of this climate crisis.”