Climate Change, Environment, Sustainability and Rural Affairs Committee

Good morning, and welcome, everybody, to the Climate Change, Environment, Sustainability and Rural Affairs Committee. I'd just like to note that the public items of this meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv and a record of proceedings will be published as usual. I'd like to note the meeting is bilingual and that simultaneous interpretation from Welsh to English is available. I'd now like to ask Members: are there any declarations of interest other than ones we've had already on the record? No. Lovely.

So, we'll now move on to item 2, which is our inquiry into wildfires, and we have an evidence session with fire and rescue services and chief officers from across Wales. So, I'd like to hand over to them to introduce themselves. We'll start with you, Fin, thank you.

Bore da. Fin Monahan, prif swyddog tân de Cymru.

I'm Fin Monahan. I'm the chief fire officer of south Wales.

Bore da. Craig Flannery, chief fire officer of Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service.

Bore da, bawb. Good morning, everyone. My name is Matthew Jones. I'm the assistant chief fire officer for South Wales Fire and Rescue Service.

Lovely. Thank you and good morning. Thank you very much for joining us today. So, Members have got a number of questions that they'd like to ask you about the recent wildfires that we've had across the country. And can I just say, from the start, that our committee is very grateful for all the work that you and all your staff have done right the way across Wales in responding to the wildfires and making sure our communities were kept safe during that period? So, thank you very much on behalf of the committee. I'm sure I speak on behalf of the whole Senedd as well in thanking you for all your work.

So, I'd just like to talk about some of the general impacts of the wildfires across Wales. I'd just like to know your overall experience, as the fire and rescue service, of dealing with the wildfires this summer and the pressures you faced. So, I don't really know who wants to go. Shall we start with Fin, in the middle?

So, thanks very much. And also, before I go into the general description, I must highlight just how extensive these wildfires were. For us in south Wales, it was probably the biggest wildfire operation that we've ever conducted in our 30-year history. And it wasn't just the fact that we had wildfires; it was the enduring nature of them. And this has built over years, but certainly we had a very, very busy time, and we have one of the biggest wildfire teams in the United Kingdom. I'd like to thank our operational staff, our control staff, our corporate staff and all of the partners who responded to this because it really was quite significant, and we'll go into some of that a bit later on, I'm sure.

From us, from our perspective, on 3 August, we declared a major incident, and that was a specific one for Llanwonno mountain. We had a threat to life, threat to property, threat to infrastructure. Also, the environment was being threatened as well—so, forestry and ecosystems. But it was particularly the threat to life and houses. So, we had about 30 houses that were under great threat, we couldn't get hold of a helicopter at that time, so we declared a major incident, with 20 pumps in attendance.

Later on, on 11 August, we declared our second major incident, and that was because we had very, very widespread wildfire activity. That placed great pressure on the whole of our service, and the reason we called that major incident was because of the threat to us in having to respond to the wildfires, but also not being able to conduct our statutory duties. And again, we'll probably go into more detail about what the actual response was later on. But, certainly, at that point, we then called in for mutual aid from across the United Kingdom. That is an existing system in which you call to other fire and rescue services and they deliver. However, with concurrent activity taking place, we had 22 fire and rescue services that answered the call, but that wasn't sufficient for us. So, then we declared a recall to duty from our firefighters—so, coming in on some of their down days, the two down days of the four that they would be resting for. And we also put out a military aid to the civil authority request. So, that was a really quite significant thing to have done. We had approximately 110 army individuals who arrived, as well as a series of large water carriers that helped us move around water strategically, because the water system was under great pressure during this period because of the heat, but also, of course, because of the amount of water that we were taking from the system and we'd been putting on wildfires in the 14 wildfires that we had spread across the country.

Matt, have you got anything to add to the south Wales picture before we move on to Craig?

I think the only thing I would add to that is, obviously, the wildfire was affecting the whole of Wales and the effect it had on us. Wales, as fire and rescue services, we have built significant resilience over the years to wildfire. But what 2026 demonstrated to us was that this was beyond the normal and, sadly, I think this, potentially, is going to be the normal for us going forward. So, for us as a sector now, it's about how we face the future, because the abnormal has just become the normal.

I think I talked about mutual aid. The really important thing to understand here is the assumptions that were made in the 2010s about what you would need as a nation—I'm talking about the UK there, because it's a whole UK system—those assumptions have changed, haven't they, because of the extreme weather that we're experiencing—and that's both the wildfire and flooding. But then, there are also all sorts of security issues as well that have changed the dynamics. So, the assumptions of the 2010s are, in my view, no longer valid. And we demonstrated that our ability to surge, as a UK national fire and rescue service, was not possible this summer because of other major incidents. I think my conclusion from that that I would offer you is that this could be the case for widespread flooding, it could be the case for wildfire, or it could be the case for a security-based terrorist attack or some threshold activity being conducted by a hostile state, or, indeed, a full-on attack as well.

Diolch. Thank you. Craig, is there anything from a mid and west perspective?

Just to add a couple of points in, but not to try and repeat too much, because it wasn't that dissimilar in mid and west. And just for Members to be aware, mid and west covers two thirds of the landmass of Wales—remote areas, rural areas, sparsely populated areas. For us, the principal challenge was not simply the number and size of individual fires, but the concentration of incidents, the prolonged and simultaneous resource commitment and the resulting pressure on the appliance availability and what we determine as our on-call duty system.

Just for everybody's awareness of our on-call duty system, we've got 56 fire stations, of which 52 have got on-call. These are part-time firefighters who respond on a pager when the community needs them. In terms of that widespread kind of resilience, we were very fortunate that we've got a strong on-call complement and they were willing to drop tools at what their normal primary job was to serve their community in that time of need. So, I think the key thing for us was that prolonged and simultaneous activity that was going on.

Similar to Fin, several critical incidents were experienced by mid and west. Probably more notably for us, at Rhandirmwyn, near Llandovery, we had a major incident declared there. Thankfully, through the involvement of the community—farmers provided access, water and agricultural tools to help us there—we were able to save properties there, and the community really rallied around. So, not just a big thank you to our professional firefighters—on-call, whole-time and fire control staff—but those communities absolutely stepped up to the mark there and they need to be commended on that.

We were in cahoots with south Wales in Llangynidr, which was the major incident that Fin relayed there. We're used to crossing the border to go and help each other out. I think, early doors, we provided six fire engines and 30 firefighters into south Wales for a small period of time, but then we needed them back to address the issues that we were dealing with as well.

I'll stop there, but I think it's very similar to Fin's environment; there were a lot of simultaneous activities, a lot of fires all at the same time. And just to give you a flavour of the UK-wide piece that Fin talked about, there were eight major incidents ongoing all at the same time, two of which were in south Wales. That hopefully gives that context.

Thank you. On major incidents, you said there were eight declared at one time. What is the threshold for declaring that major incident? How does that work in principle? Because you said you had eight going on at one time and they all require huge amounts of resource, which Members will come on to later. I'm just interested in what the threshold is for declaring that major incident.

I'll take that to start with. The definition of a major incident is, basically, any event or situation that has got serious consequences such as significant risk to life, property, essential services, the environment or national security. Basically, a major incident exceeds the kind of routine operational capacity and may require a much more concentrated effort or multi-agency response. Multi-agency response is the fire service's bread and butter, through the joint emergency services interoperability programme. It doesn't roll off the tongue, but JESIP, as it is known, is between the three blue-light services, and it is a well-known programme, where the three blue-light services, and other category 1 responders like local authorities and Natural Resources Wales, all come together in a structured programme to deal with the issue at hand. Major incidents can be declared by any category 1 organisation, and those are normally, loosely, the kind of parameters that would be associated with them.

Okay. Is there anything to add on that?

Just to underline a point I touched on earlier on. One of the things about a major incident is that, in addition to recognising that you are now starting to become overwhelmed with things and you now need support in certain areas—. And it can arise in various different ways. So, for example, it might be that your fire control is starting to get so many calls that it becomes problematic. We have lots of things in place. For fire control, we have something called Operation Willow Beck, where, as the calls start coming in, if the controllers start getting to the point that they can't handle them all, they get offloaded around the United Kingdom. It highlights that there is a plan for all of this; it's not just that something's coming at you and you're responding, and then you are overwhelmed and you can't deal with it. It's really well thought out.

But I think the big point that I would like to make today is about UK national capacity set against the number of major incidents that were taking place. I'll give you a few figures, actually. If you want to get inside my head as the chief of the organisation, you can start to understand that, between 19 July and 1 September, we received 15,560 calls—this is in the executive summary—compared with a five-year average of 4,748. You can see that that is an increase of 227 per cent. If you look at the resource mobilisations, we had 6,221 mobilisations of appliances. That generated 47,528 cumulative incident hours. You can, roughly, times that by five, and that's the number of hours that we had firefighters, because we ride with five. So you can roughly multiply that by five, although we do have some of the appliances that have fewer people, for example our bowsers. Set against a five-year average, that was a 641 per cent increase in the mobilisations that we were doing during that same period. That gives you an idea about how busy we really were in statistical terms.

When you declare a major incident, the real bonus of doing that is that you are alerting other people to your issues. You start to then escalate things. The Welsh Government becomes aware, the UK Government becomes aware, but also all of your partner agencies, you call them together. The chair of a strategic co-ordination group is established, usually for a major incident, and the chair will then bring together groups of interested parties who will come to your assistance. Together, using the JESIP doctrine, you are able to start making decisions about all of the different parties—and in this case, it's police, it's ambulance, it's councils, it's lots of other partners who are part of that strategic co-ordination group that come together. That allows you to start offloading things to other people who are in a position to be able to help you.

I know Andrew wants to come in, but I've got one question quickly before I bring him in. In terms of the command structure for allocation of resource, for example, in general terms, how does that work? Because one thing we have heard, anecdotally and from a bit of evidence, is that sometimes requests were going in and it was taking a long time before anything came back down, shall we say, from the top, to authorise things to be done. How does that work in practice within the organisations that you have, to make sure that, when people on the ground are asking for resource that is over and above what they would normally be using, that gets turned around quickly? Because there have been times where they were asking for it and it just wasn't forthcoming.

I'll kick off to start with. I've got 72 front-line appliances across mid and west Wales's patch, across 56 stations. When they are mobilised, it's taken in control, control basically manage the incident until the fire engines arrive, with their commanders. Commanders then will take over as incident commander. We'll have tactical officers, then, that go out in cars, which provide a greater degree of supervision into those incidents. As the incident escalates and gets more fire engines, you get more officers and functional officers in there to support. So, in essence, at the scene, a command structure is then set up to support the successful resolution at the scene.

One of the things I mentioned right at the beginning here was it's not just about incident numbers; it's about prolonged incidents, and significant incidents at that. One of our baseline assumptions within mid and west was to be able to service three significant incidents at the same time. We went beyond that this summer, and not just beyond it in terms of four or five fire engines, but into double figures. So, you can start to see, with 72 front-line appliances, that creates a pressure on the system. And when you get into spate conditions, whether it's floods, whether it's wildfires—obviously, we're talking about wildfires today—then what tends to happen is calls can get stacked, because we will get there as quickly as we can, but we're currently deployed into other areas.

I think what we saw this summer was—. I've got an on-call station called Seven Sisters, in the Valleys. That station and that crew were deployed into Cardiff central, going to property fires in Cardiff. I had west Wales crews in Haverfordwest coming all the way to Swansea. So, we have the ability to move trucks around and to do standby moves and to move our resources where they're needed, but when we've got multiple protracted incidents of significance going on at the same time, we've only got 72 fire engines with the number of firefighters we've got to go out to them. So, when you see surge conditions like that happen, you are going to see some delays in some areas depending on what's already deployed out there.

From my perspective, I think it's really important to put across to the committee the fact that hard decisions have to be made, because we're trying to service the wildfires as well as the road traffic collisions, the fires in domestic dwellings and industrial dwellings, and also all of the water responsibilities that we've got. So, you're constantly making very difficult decisions there about what you allocate to which, and there's a whole prioritisation that needs to take place.

I think that your question also referred here not just to things that were going on within the fire service, but the broader allocation of assets and assets coming. I'll start with the army there. So, the army came. We actually made a request, and we had people with us within 11 hours. I thought that was actually very quick for a military aid to the civil authorities request. So, that was actually very effective. In terms of the request for mutual aid from other fire and rescue services, they actually came very quickly once the request was made, from 22 fire and rescue services. However, that wasn't enough for us to service all of the 14 wildfires we had burning as well as cover our statutory duties.

Then you get into the broader sharing of assets such as agricultural machinery, because that's really quite important, particularly when a wildfire has become deep-seated. Really, at that time, you're into making local requests and building contracts at the time. We do have relationships with people, so we already know who we're going to go to, but the wildfires don't necessarily pitch up in the same place each year, so that has to be reasonably fluid. Then we've got other partnership agencies—Natural Resources Wales is one, for example, Dŵr Cymru. They've got their own pressures. Could we get more assets? Yes, please. Are there enough? Well, I think we demonstrated that we didn't quite have enough assets this year.

On air support, we asked for air support. The first helicopter took 48 hours to arrive. I think you might ask a question about that more specifically later on. That is insufficient. I come from an aviation background. We can talk about that in more detail later on.

Lovely. I know Andrew wanted to come in, then Laura.

Just briefly, we had the Fire Brigades Union in two weeks ago. They made a point that there's no national plan to deal with wildfires and co-ordinating that. You've given evidence to the committee today that gives an indication that there is a form of national plan for major incidents. I, a simple lay person, am just trying to put those two together, because they don't correlate, the two statements. Or is it correct to say that there is no national plan, that all you do is instigate the plan that you have for any civil contingency that is requiring joint agency effort? And therefore, is there a need, given your experience this summer, to have a specific national plan that would assist in your co-ordination around wildfires?

I'll jump in and then hand over to Matt. We've got a community risk management plan. Each service will have their own community risk management plan, which looks at the risks specific to our area and those communities, whether it's urban, whether it's rural. Within that community risk management plan, we understand the risk, the severity and the kind of equipment that's needed, and that basically determines how we match resource to risk. From a major incident perspective—. Probably just before I move into major incidents, we've also got local resilience forums, under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, that have a community risk register. There will be certain things on that register that the local resilience forum sees as a more multi-agency risk. So, between the community risk management plan of the individual fire service and the local resilience forum's community risk register, we've got a risk picture, albeit—

But—sorry to cut across you—in fairness, they made the point that it does sit in the risk register, and it has sat in the risk register for a considerable period of time.

Yes.

But what hasn't happened is this step, then, to a national co-ordinated plan, and, as I say, I'm just trying to work out—. The evidence you've given us this morning indicates that there are civil contingency plans for multi-agency working, but am I correct in saying there is no national plan when it comes to wildfire?

I think you're right. I think, in terms of a pan-Wales, one plan for wildfire, we're not there. What we've got is a number of plans for a number of areas, recognising that one plan—. We can have one strategy, I would suggest, but each individual area will be different. So, you've got the rural areas, you’ve got the urban areas, you’ve got the ones on the fringe. That whole rural:urban interface is going to look different in different areas. So, you're right—I think there isn't a national Wales strategy for wildfire. It was discussed at the Wales climate resilience summit recently, about what that would look like with all the multi-agency partners, and perhaps that is work for the Wales wildfire board that lays ahead for it.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair.

Do you want to add anything?

Yes, what I'd like to add to that is the fact that what you've also got as well is national resilience. So, National Resilience England have a dedicated capability for wildfire, and this is something now. So, there's a paper that we have submitted to the national resilience governance group asking for that to be mirrored under National Resilience Wales as well, because what it would give you then, as CFO Monahan and CFO Flannery have rightly said, is it would give you that pan-Wales approach to training, the doctrine for wildfire, and the capability as well—very much what's been seen in England as part of that. So, that is in England, and we need to pick that up now and replicate that in Wales.

How long has it been in England?

It has been in England now for probably just over 12 months, perhaps 18 months, as part of that, then, and, obviously, MHCLG have also invested £97 million in uplifting National Resilience England as well. So, again, these are the things that we need to look at, because it's much more than just wildfire.

That abbreviation you used—what was that abbreviation? They invested £98 million.

MHCLG—so, local government, as part of housing in Government, they've invested that £98 million—

The Whitehall department.

—into National Resilience England, and with that replication, because, obviously, of our devolution, we have National Resilience Wales, and we should be looking then to have a dedicated capability for wildfire lead within there. Then what you've got is that exact similarity throughout Wales, because what I'd like the Chair and the Members to understand is, as a sector, we don't declare major incidents very, very easily. It takes a lot for us to declare a major incident, and I think the gravitas that the services were under in Wales this year emphasises that. Sometimes it's beyond what we discuss as the wildfires—it's maintaining those dwelling fires, road traffic collisions, water rescue, which is, obviously, a statutory duty just for us in Wales, which doesn't exist in England. So, with those additional pressures as well, we maintain that responsibility.

I've got a number of hands going up now. I'll go Laura, Anna, then John.

Yes, just following on from what they said, I want to first reiterate what our Chair said at the beginning: thank you so much. But, Matthew Jones—sorry, my eyesight is so bad—you said at the beginning there was significant resilience that you've built up over the years, because a lot of people out there don't realise that wildfires happen all the time, but the significance of this one was obviously profound. So, you've got some sort of resilience there. Within that, is there specific training on peat fires, for example? Because, obviously, as you know, they burn very differently to a normal fire, and I was wondering how—. You've brought in all these—. You say you've got some sort of resilience, so I want to know how trained your guys are to deal with those specific fires. And then, when you're bringing in all these fire services from the rest of the UK, are they trained too? Who is co-ordinating that response? How much were Natural Resources Wales and the farmers involved in advising you what to do on the ground, because I'm aware that, in Blaenavon, in my patch, the farmers there, and the commoners, were very hands-on in their approach on the front line, helping out? Is there something that could be learned from that? Obviously, where you work in partnership with them, going forward, there needs to be some sort of concrete plan there just in case this stuff, which is probably inevitable, will happen again. And what's the level of who's listening to what? Is that best practice that you learned when you were there going to be emanated across Wales, perhaps in a national plan, as Andrew just said, which I think would probably be exactly the sort of thing that you need to put in there?

You said you were resilient anyway, but it came to my attention from one of the commoners in Blaenavon—it's no criticism, but I'm just wondering—that they said that if the fire had been contained earlier, we could have stopped that spread, and it was because there was no fire service at a specific time one evening at the very beginning. So, if you knew that wildfires were going to happen, I can't understand why that wouldn't have been jumped on straight away, and whether that level—. Is that too much of an expectation? I don't know if the commoners have too much of an expectation there, or is that something that you're going to now look at, in terms of jumping on things straight away and not letting them get out of control, specifically because they're peat fires and they jump everywhere?

It's a very difficult thing to deal with. As a peat fire, it's a very challenging incident, and certainly this year it was probably the greatest number of peat fires we've seen, and that's due to the moisture levels and due to the ground. It's also due to the land management as well—effective land management. Again—not wanting to get into the minutiae of it—things like the deep-seated fires of peat would basically burn deep and then would pop up somewhere else.

With Blaenavon, Blaenavon was very challenging. We threw significant resources at Blaenavon for a significant length of time. Again, a big 'thank you' always goes to those commoners and landowners, because working with them was absolutely effective and has made us review our tactics as well, and not just our tactics, but questioning our equipment. So, things potentially that you would have never looked at as a service—tractors, bowsers—the agricultural machinery that maybe years ago we wouldn't have looked at, we are absolutely looking at now and taking those learning points as part of that.

Exactly as CFO Flannery rightly said, the community risk management plans, or our CRMP, are very much driven and embedded around those specific risks, like the land management element. But we will take a lot of learning, working with the landowners, and that's where elements such as the strategic co-ordination groups and tactical co-ordination groups, are stood up, with representatives from those agencies. It's important they're getting into there and that we are working collectively together.

But the key thing for us with this is not around the response, going forward, it's around our prevention and land management, because that's where effective firefighting actually starts. It's where we're preventing these fires spreading or actually occurring.

If I may add to that, I'd just like to underline that lots of prevention work already takes place from us in the fire and rescue services. We go into schools and, in south Wales, we even have a mobile children's theatre to educate people about wildfire. We have arson prevention teams that are going out, and arson is an issue for wildfire. So, we are already working with partners in that prevention space.

Something I think that was really powerful that came out of the summit is the number of people who actually would like to be better prepared. I think that was one of the things that came across to me. And I think it might be worth considering looking at the Swedish and the Finnish models and the way they go about what they call total defence, which is something that started in the cold war as military or civil-military co-operation and now is the tool that they use to prepare themselves for crisis, as well as attack. Therein, they have members of the public who are well trained and know what they're going to be doing and what their contribution is, but also public organisations and volunteer organisations, and it's very well co-ordinated. All of that comes down to having a command and control system, which might not be the word that you want to use, because some people have got a bit of an allergy to the words 'command' and 'control', but that's what it is. You need to have some kind of system whereby you can start bringing people together and co-ordinating them. And all of that also requires training, in my view, as well—pre-emptive training.

I'm jumping across to Niamh on this one point, but I promise I'll come back to you, Laura.

Diolch. Just following on from that, in Blaenau Gwent, in Cwm, they've got the taskforce there—obviously they didn't 'build' it, but they established it after the flooding. When the wildfires were happening in Cwm as well, I thought that was a really good tool that was used, actually. It got the message across to the community and everyone was helping each other out as well with the wildfires. Is that something you want to see replicated a lot more, then, across other areas? I thought that was a really perfect example, and we heard in the last session from local authorities that that was a really good example of the community really being involved and helping with this.

Absolutely. Cwm is a really good example. We've got great examples in Monmouthshire as well. And as CFO Flannery has rightly said, there are great examples sitting across mid and west Wales as well. It's creating those more resilient communities that we're able to work with, informing and warning when these events are placing those risks to communities, But, absolutely, the model now that we will be focusing another area of our prevention on is working with those communities to develop resilient communities that can support during these events, because, as we rightly understand, it's going to move from one climate event to another climate event, such as wildfire to flooding. So, for us, it's about working with those communities, building that resilience, working with local groups as well, to ensure that the right messaging, the right resilience, the right prevention is happening before these events. Again, for us, that's the key bit, working with the local authorities, the landowners, around managing the land, firebreaks and such, to control this element.

Can I just come in on that, as well? I know you're pushed for time. I think it's fair to say that the fire services are engaging much more with the voluntary sector than we ever have done. So, from a mid and west perspective, we are doing much more in relation to local community flooding. I know this is wildfire, but there are floodwater groups, flood wardens and flood marshals that can actually help identify the most vulnerable in society, and we can actually work with them for the deployment of preventative measures. So, I think it's fair to say that, since the summer, we are now looking at what that voluntary sector integration piece looks like for wildfires as well. You talked earlier on about that early activation. Quite often, the early activation comes through to control, but recognising, if controls calls are stacked up, we've got to get through them, but if we've got these volunteers and champions locally in terms of that resilience and that early activation, then volunteers can early activate us and get to work as well.

One final point I just wanted to raise, going back to the previous question around resilience, is that I'd go back to my on-call firefighters. In the three services in Wales, we are the one that's most reliant upon on-call. As I've mentioned already, these are part-time firefighters in their community. They are the community. Often they are the pillars of resilience. They're the first people for the local community to go to when they've got an issue. Certainly, from a mid and west perspective, they were the ones that provided the resilience. I can give you two examples really quickly. In Rhayader, they were out on a wildfire and, rather than that truck come back and different trucks replace it, the additional crew in Rhayader went out to do the welfare changeover. So, you still had the Rhayader pump there; you were just able to just swap the personnel over. That doesn't necessarily happen with whole-time, but it happened with Rhayader. In Gorseinon, another on-call station, they had a spare fire engine there that had been serviced, and they found some extra equipment, they put it on the run, and then we had an extra fire engine. So, there was initiative, there was imperative. Our on-call firefighters absolutely stepped into the space. These are the on-call firefighters that, during COVID, stepped up to vaccinate. During inclement weather, they're the ones that go in 4x4 vehicles to get the health visitors to the most vulnerable in society. So, I think there is something here. The voluntary groups, absolutely, but recognising the value of your on-call firefighters out there is vitally important as well.

I should have declared an interest, as a friend is an on-call firefighter. Anna.

This is going back to Andrew's point, really. I'm trying to understand, I suppose, that what you're saying is it's the resilience that we need to be really focusing on, resilience to all sorts of different climate-related emergencies that might arise. So, there is an element of a pan-Wales wildfire plan, but it's not something you're pushing where we almost need to set up something separate for wildfire plans. There's something here about national resilience on all sorts of issues where these local responses or networks of people are going to be needed, but there's an element, perhaps, where we can strengthen the wildfire-specific element. It's fitting it within and not setting up something different over here, essentially, is what you're saying.

If I can take that to start with, one of the things I made mention of at the summit recently was that I think it's fair to say that we're more advanced in flooding. There's a pan-Wales plan for flooding. Government have just set back up the pan-Wales flood forum, which is great to see. That brings a much more integrated approach, from having a national strategy and plan right down to local plans and how they integrate and mesh in to support that wider approach. And so I totally agree with you. We can just look across into a slightly different climate change event and recognise that we probably need to set up something similar. But going forward, this is much more about climate adaptation and how we kind of evolve and adapt to meet those new risks and emerging needs, as opposed to setting lots of different things up at the same time. So, I think there are lessons to be learned from what's already worked quite well from a flooding perspective.

In flooding, there is much more of a tiered response in terms of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs concept of operations, not getting into the details, but type B being your boat and your swift water rescue technicians, type C being swift water rescue technicians, right down to waders and everything else. And certainly, from a mid and west perspective, over the last few years, we've increased flood water capability, and certainly over the last 12 to 18 months we've started to increase wildfire capability. But certainly, on the back of this year, we'll be expediting and moving that at much more pace.

Thank you.

John, you had a question earlier. Has it been covered?

I have to compliment everybody. They've covered most of them, and the answers have been fantastic. If I could just go on to a few, if I may. The question I was going to ask is with regard to the pre-emptive side of it, which you've actually done. The only other bit I could dig into maybe a little bit more is how far and with whom are you going into that level? Because there must be sort of targeted areas that you've established that are more at risk in terms of pure natural risk of fire, and there would be others that would be at risk of human-created fire. Which organisations are you linking in with to make sure that you target those specifically? But obviously, if that national plan is in the process of being created for fire that exists for water, then what other groups—? I mean, it's great to see some sort of Scandinavian system, where people take responsibility for what happens in their own communities and environment, which in itself is going to reduce the risk of fire, because you take responsibility within the community itself. It's going to help massively. But which groups are you working with and how closely? I can only ask, please.

So, again, you've got your local groups, then. So, you've got your strategic tier of that, which is your Natural Resources Wales, your Public Health Wales, those groups you work with. But that obviously comes right down, then, to the individuals, such as landowners, commoners associations and, again, local groups of individuals as well.

Are these formalised, then, the relationships that you make?

Again, yes. Many of these are formalised through things such as the community safety partnerships. And, again, I think what this year has taught us is to look around the table and see who's missing.

Right.

As CFO Flannery has rightly said, with flooding I think we've become very adept at looking around the table and saying, 'Who's missing? Who do we need?' Because, again, it's taking that same methodology now and applying it to wildfire, because this year wildfire significantly changed our response. We've seen an increasing rise in the threat to property, to life. We've seen that rise this year. And for us now, this is how we need to posture ourselves, working with local authorities, local landowners, local community groups as well, getting that right down to those community groups, which we have done in a number of areas, such as the examples that have been given today. So, it's continuing that on, reinforcing it and ensuring it is formalised in a way going forward, and understanding that there is a difference between volunteers and sector groups as well.

So, if I can just add in there, I think this is a great opportunity to just probably hone in on the Wales wildfire board. The Wales wildfire board was set up a few years ago—a bit of an offshoot of the strategic arson reduction board, recognising that wildfires are an issue for us here in Wales and obviously are becoming much more emergent in that regard. So, fire services were co-founders of that, and that probably is the most formalised arrangement between us and other organisations, working across three themes, so partnership, environmental and community resilience, and prevention and protection. So, those are the three key themes of the wildfire board. On the board, you've got NRW, who are currently chairing. The fire service chaired it for the first two years, then handed it over. You've got landowners on there, commoners associations, the National Farmers Union and the Farmers Union of Wales—two trade unions that I actually wrote an open letter of thanks to because of what their members did.

So, that wildfire board is probably the coming together, formalising across those three themes—. They're the ones that run Wildfire Wise, which is an educational programme out there about how to control burn, when to control burn. There's also been, as Fin's mentioned already, the educational programme in schools. We plug into that at certain times of the year as Operation Dawns Glaw, and then a few other initiatives that are going on to make sure that our young people are aware of the impact of fires in rural areas and everything else.

So, that's probably the main thrust, and it's certainly the area that I raised during the summer as being that vehicle. You mentioned already about not reinventing the wheel. We've got a vehicle. We've got some infrastructure. It just needs strengthening.

If there was one reasonable thing that you could have, what would that be?

Sorry, I missed that question.

If there was one thing that you could get that you really, really need that you haven't got, what would that be?

In terms of the fire service?

Yes.

I think we need to move at pace in enhancing our capability. From a funding perspective, we're quite limited. Our current funding arrangements are levying on local authorities, which means that they take the strain of any additional capability and requirements that we have to meet. There are no capital grants per se that come into the fire service. There's no income generation. It's purely on the local authorities, which makes it very difficult when they're balancing health, social care and everything else. So, I would say investment opportunity. One thing I would suggest is how do we invest in fire services to be able to increase capability to meet the new and emerging risks that we're dealing with.

I know there are a lot of Members who want to talk about the Wales wildfire board, but I know, in fairness to Paul, he's been waiting a very long time and I haven't come to him yet. So, I'll bring Paul in. I know Andrew wanted to speak. I'll move on to the wildfire board, then. I know Vikki's got some questions on that, and I know Niamh has. So, Paul, back to the questions you had earlier. Sorry.

Diolch, James. Just thinking about the voluntary groups, the third sector groups and whatever, I was wondering about people like mountain rescue as well, whether they're part of that, and people like that. I was considering whether they might be the same people sometimes as your on-call fire officers and whether you're starting to see, and perhaps those other organisations are starting to see, pushback from employers, or some of those people feeling that they might have to step back because of the impact on their jobs and on their families. I don't know if you'd like to talk about that at all.

Yes, we absolutely have people from lots of different volunteer agencies. I'll spread this from wildfire. So, for example, we've got the Severn Area Rescue Association, which is the search and rescue team, which, actually, we host on one of our stations. Those relationships are actually very, very strong already. And when we call an SCG, lots of these agencies are already on the calling list to come.

I think that, judging from the energy and enthusiasm that I saw at the wildfire summit from lots of different people from lots of different organisations, there is a real opportunity here for us in Wales to use the fact that we've got some amazingly cohesive communities. We definitely saw that in different areas during these wildfires, where people really did come together. It would be really useful, I think, in the future to try to co-ordinate that activity at the Welsh national level. I think that could well be something that comes out of that summit, provided action now takes place, because co-ordination of people allows them to be prepared, allows them to understand how they can contribute.

So, there are certain circumstances where we have people who really want to contribute, so they just pitch up with lots of food. Well, they probably could have done other things as well. Matt, I don't know if you want to add to that.

Absolutely, you're right with the employees. I'm sure CFO Flannery will come in on this now. From our on-call perspective and certainly for the likes of SARA, mountain rescue, coastguard, many of these individuals are our on-call firefighters and they bring so much value from their other roles as well as part of that. Certainly, we've got that robust system in place when it comes to flooding, and it's how we now start to think about, exactly as the chief said, how do we utilise these communities and individuals when it's coming to other climate events as well.

And with the employees, there's a lot of work going on nationally now with the on-call system through the National Fire Chiefs Council around how we engage with employers more to understand and champion the benefits of their employees when they're undertaking these on-call roles and voluntary roles as well. So, there's a lot of work going on on that, but I'm sure CFO Flannery will add more to that as well.

So, just to touch on the employers from an on-call perspective, you're absolutely right, the employers took a bit of a hit with the on-call coming out, and we've reached out, we've done our thanks, we've done the recognition, and I'm pleased to say local authorities support those employers that are releasing on-call in various different ways. In fact, local authorities give additional leave to their members of staff who are on-call firefighters. My headquarters in Carmarthen is next to the Carmarthen station and when the pagers go off, I've got a number of staff, estates, ICT and different staff members stepping up to do that protection.

So, what is probably pertinent to add in here is that in April of this year, we concluded a joint piece of work with Welsh Government to look at what national support Government can give us in terms of on-call, and some of that support is through supporting the employers who release them. Now, I know that the Cabinet Minister for fire, Siân Gwenllian, is meeting with us in November. It's on the agenda to look at how we can harness that energy much more and what Government can do to help us. There are certain things that we can't do—we can do locally—but there are certain things Government can do.

Just coming to mountain rescue as an example, we share locations, so some of our fire stations have got kit and equipment and vehicles there, but probably one of the ones I would raise is the Brecon team. So, the Brecon team from a floodwater perspective are type C, they're DEFRA team typed, and we've now put into place, when we mobilise for certain calls, we let them know straight away so they can activate, come into our command structure to help integrate into whatever rescues we're doing.

So, that close alignment that Matt talked about is definitely there. There are more areas that we can do. British Red Cross is a prime example, we have a co-operation agreement with them, so that when we put a fire out or pump water out of a house and we're going back to the station and members of those communities are still distraught, British Red Cross come in then to help with boarding up, hygiene packs, clothing packs, cash packs and things like that to help when the dust has settled, so to speak. So, we're doing more, but more could be done as well.

Lovely. Just quickly to Members: we've literally got 13 minutes left, so if answers and questions could be quite succinct, I'd be very grateful. Andrew, have you got a new point? Because I do I do want to move on to Vikki who wants to talk about the wildfire board.

Yes, it is a new point, but Vikki hasn't asked hers, so let Vikki speak first.

That's very gentlemanly of you, Andrew, thank you. Vikki.

Thank you. Just on the Wales wildfire board, so obviously after the wildfire summit, the Welsh Government said in their written statement that they'd like to look at a strengthened wildfire board. So, I'm keen to get your views on the current role of the wildfire board and how that might possibly look if it was strengthened.

I'll start off, probably, because I think it was mid and west that were one of the original founders, and I think what is really pleasing is—going back to your earlier point—we've already got infrastructure, we've already got a vehicle there, we just need to kind of enhance it and strengthen it, which is what the approach needs to be.

One of the things that we could talk about is that organisations are already under their own individual pressures, and here is a board coming together for the right common ground and purpose, which is how do we prevent wildfires happening in the first place, how do we educate, how do we prevent and protect. So, one of the things they've talked about in terms of strengthening that is providing secretariat support to that board, potentially ministerial involvement in that board, because, really, what that board needs to do is inform policy makers, and I think that's been the gap at the moment. It's been a great opportunity for partners to get around the table to discuss what those issues are, but in terms of being able to influence policy, that's probably a bit of a gap there.

So, I think one of the things that's come out of the summit, which is one of the things that the wildfire board was pushing for, is for the heather and grass code, the burning code to be reviewed. The First Minister has given a commitment to reviewing that at pace. So, that is an example of how the work of that board, in the future, moves into tangible actions, not just words and networks and partnership working, but real tangible actions coming out of it. So, I think that's one of the areas that will be strengthened.

I think the three key themes are pretty much still relevant: prevention and protection, partnership, and that environmental and community resilience. I just think we need to inject a little bit more emphasis and focus into it.

Thank you, that makes sense. And just to follow on with the educational role of the Wales wildfire board, I know that the campaign now is called Wildfire Wise. I was very familiar with Operation Dawns Glaw and all the work that was done there, particularly in schools. I can't say I've really heard of Wildfire Wise. You referred earlier to Operation Dawns Glaw, Craig, so I'm just keen to understand whether Operation Dawns Glaw has now come to an end and Wildfire Wise—? Obviously, it rolls off the tongue a lot easier as well. But just to get an understanding of the level of familiarity with that, because in the last evidence session, the Fire Brigades Union and Cyngor Gwynedd said that they weren't familiar with that phrase of that campaign.

Wildfire Wise, yes. So, the Wildfire Wise has come from the wildfire board specifically in relation to what is the human activity that is starting these fires. Now, you can see that what happened—. We stopped all disposable barbecues at one point, which is a small area of perhaps what's starting these, but a lot of this goes back to what we've talked about already: land management—#BurnToProtect is another tagline coming out from that board. So, perhaps strengthening that board is to strengthen the educational messages that are coming out from that board.

Operation Dawns Glaw is historic, it's been there year on year for many, many years, and it's well embedded and well known. I think, because Wildfire Wise is only a couple of years old, they're still getting to grips with what that looks like in terms of schools' education programmes, youth justice teams and things like that. So, I fully take that on board—it's still quite embryonic.

Can I move to Members? I know that Laura wants to come in, but Niamh had her hand up first, so I'll go to Niamh, Laura, and I know Andrew wants to speak as well. So, Niamh.

Yes, diolch. A lot of things that Vikki mentioned on it—. I was quite surprised that the FBU and Cyngor Gwynedd hadn't heard of it because—. And also, I've been given three different times as to when the campaign started as well, because I think Torfaen said it was in March, Natural Resources Wales said it was last year, and then you said 'a couple of years'. So, I'm just a bit confused as to when the campaign for Wildfire Wise actually started.

Another thing as well with the Wales wildfire board: are local authorities on that? Am I right in thinking they're not on the Wales wildfire board?

I think there's an invitation there, but I think one of the things that they're looking at at the moment, as Matt alluded to earlier on, is whether we've got all the right people around the table and membership-wise. Historically, it was about land management, land owners, commoners' associations, National Farmers Union, Farmers Union of Wales, to make sure that those people who have charge of land and hill areas and mountain areas come together to really discuss it. So, it was set up in 2023, the board. So, in terms of a board, it's still quite young in terms of its offering. And I think Wildfire Wise came out the following year, just to give you some idea of instigation from there, but I fully take on board that more communication is needed in this regard.

Yes, so, local authorities—. I guess that's something that would have come up, I'm sure, from the wildfire summit—that they should probably be part of that board moving forward as well, just because, obviously, they're the ones dealing with a lot of stuff as well.

Yes, and one of the things I think that also came up is that, historically, it has not necessarily had the governmental representation from the right areas of Government as well. And so making sure that we've got those multiple Government directorates on the board as well, not just the fire branch, is really important. It's not just about the role of the fire service here, it's about the role of everyone—this whole-system approach to it.

Lovely. Laura.

Just really quickly on that, and just following on from what the ladies have just said, do you think the Wales wildfire board is the right vehicle to go into schools and talk about arson attacks and human error when it comes to wildfires? Because you said earlier that you already had educational programmes in place. Now, we had the FBU in last week who said that one of the problems, as well as what the ladies have outlined about the lack of awareness of it, is the fact that it hasn't got much funding attached to it. Is that something that you can confirm to us now—that you'll put more funding in it if you see it as a good vehicle to create that awareness, which is absolutely essential, considering that most of these fires have been started by human error or arson?

If I could just take that. There's a point about capacity here, which really needs to be considered. Going in and doing our educational programmes, we do that for wildfire, but we also do that for RTC, so road traffic collisions, and fire. We are capacity-limited. We are doing lots of other things. So, we do home-safety visits. We go and do risk visits to buildings to make sure that buildings are safe and also that, when we arrive at a building, we know how to respond to it. All of that takes time out of our firefighters' capacity, nd all of that is also ordered and built within a community risk-management plan. So, we've just concluded ours and it's out for consultation at the moment.

We've looked at all of the risks in our community, and we need to balance up those capacity issues. But I suppose that that does bring me on to the broader capacity issue that we touched on for the UK nationally earlier on, but my big question is—. We are in a state of expansion as South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, recognising that the threats that we faced in 2010 are very different to the threats that we face now, and there were lots of cuts in the 2010s, so let's remember that. So, we are in a state of expansion. But my budget is tiny, to allow me to expand—10, 12 firefighters is all I can really afford. And my big question is: how are we, as Wales, as a UK nation, going to expand when we have major incidents taking place all across the country? And that could be for wildfire, it could be for flooding, it could be for other major incidents, and it could be in the event of a major terrorist incident or an attack, which, of course are on the rise.

Yes. Just really quickly, you're completely right on capacity, of course, but going back to the education thing, obviously you're stretched at the moment, but do you think that there's a role for Welsh Government to play when we're creating this national plan to find a person who is going to be able to deliver that? And maybe fund it, then, if you are also stretched in that regard.

If I go back to the point that I made, quite a good model is to go and look at the Nordic countries, because they have integrated everything and it's really impressive. So, integration of education so that it is cohesive and it's all the way across Wales. There is a broader question as well. What Craig's doing in his area is different to what I'm doing in my area, which is different to what's going on in north Wales. Cohesion of activity is something that we really need to be doing, and that does take direction—I think from the very top, actually.

Can I just, really quickly, sorry—

Very quickly, if that's okay.

Very quickly. So, I wrote to the Cabinet Minister for education last week in terms of how do we expand the curricula within our schools programme to not just make sure that we're covering off home safety and wildfires but the wider resilience piece as well. So, we've got educational teams. It is about them evolving the curricula to meet the requirements as well.

Okay. We've probably got time for two questions. I know that Anna is desperate and I know that Andrew asked ages ago to come in. Have you got one quick question, Andrew, and then—?

Well, it's a combination.

If you could wrap them all together, that would be good.

Yes, I'll certainly do that. A recent freedom of information request in The Guardian from the Country Land and Business Association on fire services indicated the preparedness of the services across the UK. The personal protective equipment issue has been an issue that's come to light. Some services offer no specialist PPE. Others, such as Kent and West Yorkshire, issue one piece of PPE to every firefighter. What's the status in your fire services? Do you issue PPE to every fire service member, or are you a work in progress?

So, we have PPE for every single one of our firefighters in South Wales Fire and Rescue Service. Is it enough? No. And we have raised that as an issue to Welsh Government, because, in this extended period, when you're coming off shift and then you're going back on shift in just a few hours, washing it and getting it turned around to be able to go out starts to present a contamination issue. So, it is our view that we should be issuing more. Now, there are other fire and rescue services in the rest of the UK that don't even have any. So, we are better placed than that in South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, but we believe we need more.

In mid and west we have multifunctional kit. We have structural firefighting kit. The structural firefighting kit is not a personal issue anymore. It used to be. What happens is if that is soiled or out in an incident, you come back, you put it in the wash basket, so to speak, and you take a new one out. So, from a contaminant perspective, we've got a technology innovation approach to that called PPmE that we're doing more with.

The multifunctional kit was tested to the previous ISO, about 180 degrees. The standards have changed slightly and we're about to look at what does a replacement for that multifunctional kit look like. And that is the opportunity to make it not just about wildfire, but also about RTCs and lighter use as well.

And do you offer wildfire training to all your service men and women?

We actually have one of the biggest wildfire trained teams in the United Kingdom. We also do technical burns, for example. We're one of only, I think, four or five services to do that. So, we actually have very well-trained teams. One of the reasons you might not have heard of South Wales Fire and Rescue Service having lots of wildfire problems in the past is because we have actually invested an awful lot of time and energy into that over the years. It was the scale this year. We very rarely have to draw from right the way across the UK. Usually, there's a bit of a backwards and forwards between mid and west and north, but, actually, our teams are pretty big. We also offer training to other people. So, that's a reassurance to you, I think. Matt, do you want to add to that?

And you as well?

The training that we offer is not as comprehensive as in south Wales. We don't have burnback teams like they do; they do proactive burns to create fire breaks. Our teams are similarly trained up to national operational guidance, drawn down, so basic awareness, basic use of tools. We've got a tiered-level approach. We'll have a tactical adviser. You've got a number of tac ads. We've got tac ads. They're the tactical officers with additional training. But certainly, what we've seen this summer is making us review if that training is suitable and sufficient, because what we saw this summer, as we know, has been unprecedented.

Okay, thank you.

Really, really quickly—

Very, very quickly, Anna, because we're eating into the end of the day now.

Yes, okay. So, what you've described is the severe wildfires this summer, where you were stretched pretty much to capacity at times, and also I think one of you said at the beginning that this is the abnormal becoming the normal now, and we're looking at a situation where this is going to only get more severe over the next 10, 20 years. Do you think that we need more strategic leadership from Welsh Government to enable that kind of strategic action on adaptation, so that we're really looking ahead now and preparing? You're not going to cope, in a way, if it just gets worse and worse, without some more focus on that adaptation.

Diolch, Anna. Thank you.

Absolutely. This needs to be led from the very top, I think, in a very collaborative way. There are models out there to go and look at. I think Wales has got a real opportunity to actually lead the UK, because we've got such cohesive communities right the way across Wales. But there are certain things that we just can't do as a fire and rescue service. I mean, the aerial service that we had—if we could get to those fires more quickly using aerial assets, then that would be great. We couldn't get hold of them for 48 hours, to begin with. That is because we have a system that is unprioritised and that is not built on contracts, so not held at readiness, for example. I can't do that myself as a fire and rescue service. The proposition that's been put forward by the UK Government only offers the strategic lift and not the day-to-day, held at readiness, smaller and medium-sized assets that can get there quickly, but also we can start co-ordinating our communities. I think that is a central function of Government, and I think that's what we should be doing, and we will contribute as much as we possibly can to that.

Yes, thank you. I know a lot of Members want to come in, but I'm going to have to— . I've got one question about the role of the Welsh Government from myself. If Members have got other questions, we can write to you, if you're happy to do that.

Welsh Government have had the wildfire summit. My question is: do you think Welsh Government take this matter seriously, or do you think this is something that has happened proactively now, but it needs to continue? Is that something you feel is the mood of Government now, or do you just think this could just fall off again as we move into flooding, for example? Do you think there's actually emphasis on addressing this, here and now, from Welsh Government?

Well, we had the wildfire summit. That was the first stage. What needs to happen now is that out of that wildfire summit, we need to see proactive action that is tangible. There are also funding issues here that we need to be cognisant of. Where is the additional funding coming from? That's certainly a big concern of mine, because there's only a certain amount that I can tangibly put on my levy to the unitary authorities. So, things over and above that—. And I touched on the aerial capacity, because what is being proposed at the moment at the UK national level doesn't cover everything that we need and also doesn't start to cover things that we could be doing, like prevention, protection and ignition identification using air and space assets. That's not part of that offer. England has had £48 million offered, targeting PPE. Where is that going to come—? Are we going to get something similar? So, that's the kind of thing that I would like to understand. We need to move from a wildfire summit to the more tangible things.

Okay, lovely. Thank you. I know Members have got questions. We can always write to you on those. As I've said to Members, if you want a longer time, please have a word with your business managers to see if they can move our meetings to Thursdays and we could have longer sessions.

Can I say, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much? I know there are lots of areas we haven't covered, which we will write to you on. A Record of Proceedings will be sent to you to check for accuracy. But can I say, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much for coming in today? We certainly look forward to seeing you again at some point.

We'll just move into a short break now while we just prepare for the next panel. So, diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much.

Welcome back, everybody, and we're now on to agenda item 3, which is another evidence on wildfire resilience in Wales. This evidence session is with land management organisations. I'd like to welcome you all to our meeting today. We are running slightly behind, so I'll introduce you all, if that's okay. So, we've got Naomi Jones, who's head of land management at Eryri national park; James Hitchcock, a Wales rewilding policy and advocacy lead; John Lloyd, a member of the National Sheep Association; and Dr Ieuan Joyce, chairman of the Elan Valley Trust. Good morning and welcome. And we'll now move swiftly on to questions from Members, and our first set of questions is on rewetting, and Anna is going to take us through that. She looks very shocked, because we're moving very quickly along.

And I get to go first. It's quite exciting.

You get to go first now.

Thank you very much for all the evidence and for coming in. Rewetting the peatlands, it seems that there are lots of opportunities there for nature-based solutions and how we develop that for firebreaks. But also it seems, from the evidence, it's not always the solution and, sometimes, it might be negative. So, there's nuance here. So, I'd be interested to hear what your views are on that. But I suppose, specifically, given that it's not always the right same response across different places, what do you need from Government, so that we can make the responses right for the particular different places, I suppose, that we're looking at?

Before anybody answers, if you want to speak online, if you put your hands up, I'll keep an eye on the screen here, and I'll bring you in, but I'll start in the room, if that's okay, for this part. James, do you want to lead us off on this piece?

Yes, certainly, James, and diolch. Thank you very much for having me along today. I'm actually here representing Wales Environment Link, as well as having the change to speak for Rewilding Britain. So, for Members that don't know, Wales Environment Link is an organisation that brings together 30 environmental non-governmental organisations to engage with Welsh Government and Parliament, and develop effective environmental policy. Rewilding Britain is a charity that was formed in 2015, and it was Britain's first organisation to dedicate itself to the large-scale restoration of ecosystems. So, we do policy and advocacy work as well as supporting practitioners.

So, I think it's a great opening question and a great subject to start with, so, thank you. Wildfire risk is influenced by climate, hydrology, land management, habitat and soil condition, as well as landscape structure and human behaviour. And I think that rewetting and restoring hydrology, in all its forms, is going to be a vital part of building resilience in the long term.

So, you've touched on peat. That is important. We have a national peat action plan that funds restoration. We've just entered a new phase where the aim is to restore, I think, 1,800 hectares a year for five years, which is a trebling of the target. But we have about 90,000 hectares of peat in Wales, and 90 per cent of that is classed as degraded, according to the evidence. So, you're looking at a plan that, without any further damage from wildfire, is going to take at least 30 to 40 years to execute. So, I'd say that we need to question whether that's getting enough funding and enough priority before we get into the detail of how one accesses it.

With wildfire, there is no single solution and no silver bullet. So, this is about working together on prevention, resilience and response. And, again, going back to nature-based solutions and rewetting, that's going to be a key part of that resilience. It's going to involve working together with land managers, foresters, the public and third sector, and our communities, to create these plans for resilient landscapes. We need to do this to protect downstream communities from flooding, as well as wildfire, and they are two sides of the same coin. We need to be able to do that to create rich nature and meet our climate and nature targets, but also to produce sustainable food and opportunities for diversification. And within these actions, there's a real opportunity to recognise that, by investing in nature-based solutions and these actions, we can develop multiple benefits and multiple returns for climate, nature and people.

What do we need? We've got some headline asks, as members of Wales Environment Link. And, I think, we need to really see and develop an extreme weather resilience fund that's open to all landowners and sits outside existing streams, and is additional funding. There's been a suggestion that that could start with a £55 million fund, which is 0.2 per cent of the annual budget, and build up to spending £300 million over the programme of government.

Just for context, the integrated natural resources scheme has about £10 million in it, so this is a serious injection that would help to fast-track change. We put emphasis on that, we know that money is tight, but we know from the Climate Change Committee's research that 72 per cent of the public support actions on adaption, and would be comfortable seeing money taken from other parts of the budget to take that preventative action. So, I think we need that additional funding.

I think we need to see a climate resilience package in the sustainable farming scheme, which helps bring in the wide variety of interventions and techniques that we need—

I think we'll come on to financing later. Sorry to cut across you. We're just on the rewetting, but I think we'll come on to some of these issues later, if that's okay.

Yes, sure. So, I'll skip the need to improve the evidence base then.

I'd finish there, but, I suppose, a broad answer, and a strategic answer, is that I think we've got to the point now where, 2025, 2026, and the flooding we've seen, then going into the heatwaves and the terrible wildfires that we've seen, feels like something of a breakthrough moment. And there have been calls for a land-use framework, to help us strategically look at and identify where we make the best interventions and how those are resourced and planned, and how there's a leadership and cultural change now that's developed around that. We ask a lot from land, and it's going to take an all-Wales approach to meet the challenges and opportunities that we face.

I think Dr Joyce, online, wants to come in on this point, Anna.

Thanks, James. Yes, just because, really, I suppose, in the Elan valley, we've suffered two very serious fire years, particularly this year, in the spring—we're very vulnerable in the spring—and we've got wide areas of Molinia-dominant grassland, so we're obviously greatly at risk in the spring when we get a dry spring. We've had two consecutive years like that, following on from previous years.

Specifically with rewetting, we do have a significant programme of rewetting in the Elan valley, funded mostly through the national peatland action programme. There's another programme coming in, potentially, in the future as well, funded by Dŵr Cymru, but that's sort of a 'wait and see'.

The questioner asked, really, whether rewetting is sometimes a bad thing, and I'm struggling to think of any situation, particularly in the Elan valley, with blanket mires like we've got, where—. It's never been a bad thing. It's always had positive impacts, for nature, but also for preventing wildfires. It's just that it's only one part of the solution in a landscape like ours. It needs to be seen as the core, the focus point, rewetting the most degraded bogs, because wherever we're seeing Molinia on deep peat, that is degraded already. And it may not justify, necessarily, a full-scale intervention with diggers and re-profiling the peat, but that doesn't mean that we don't need to worry about that as part of the interventions across the wider landscape.

So, rewetting, yes. And we're spending a lot of money. NPAP is investing a lot of money: £5,000 to £10,000 a hectare on re-profiling peat to rewet. And that works, that does prevent the wildfires in those areas. But if those areas are then within a landscape that is not fire resistant, the fires will still happen and they will still cut across and through some of those restored areas, and do a lot of damage while they're doing that in terms of the value for money of rewetting. They will damage the rewetted peat itself when they do manage to get through.

For good value for money for rewetting, we need to treat the rewetted sites as part of a larger landscape and make sure that we can manage that wider landscape to make that more resilient to peat as well, but using peat as one part of the building blocks for that resilience. We need to put it alongside cutting and targeted grazing to create a defensive structure, a fire-resilient landscape with defensive structures, so that when, inevitably, we do get fires, we can get in and stop them in their tracks before they run rampant, like they have in the Elan valley this year.

Lovely. Diolch. Thank you. Naomi, and then, I don't know if John wants to come in.

Bore da, bawb. Naomi Jones ydw i, dwi'n gyfarwyddwr rheoli tir, Awdurdod Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri, ond dwi yma heddiw yn cynrychioli Tirweddau Cymru, sef y corff sy'n cynrychioli'r wyth tirwedd ddynodedig yng Nghymru, sef y tri pharc cenedlaethol a'r pum tirwedd genedlaethol hefyd. Rydyn ni'n cydweithio ar nifer o feysydd, fel grŵp o dirweddau dynodedig, ac yn benodol ar hyn o bryd, wrth gwrs, ar faes gwaith tannau gwyllt.

Wrth droi at y cwestiwn ynglŷn ag ailwlychu, yn sicr, mae'r dystiolaeth sydd gennym ni yn dangos bod ailwlychu mawndiroedd yn medru lleihau'r risg o dannau gwyllt, a hynny wrth ddiogelu bioamrywiaeth, ansawdd dŵr a storfeydd carbon. Yn debyg iawn i'r dystiolaeth gan Dr Ieuan Joyce, rydyn ni'n gweld bod ailwlychu yn un rhan o nifer o ddatrysiadau sydd eu hangen er mwyn creu gwydnwch yn y dirwedd yn erbyn tannau gwyllt, ac fe ddylai fod adfer cynefinoedd yn rhan graidd o'r ffordd rydyn ni'n eu hatal nhw, mewn ffordd. Mae angen diogelu priddoedd mawn yn arbennig oherwydd eu pwysigrwydd amgylcheddol nhw ac effeithiau sylweddol tannau mawn hefyd, ond mae cyflawni'n llwyddiannus yn golygu bod yn rhaid inni ofyn am well hyfforddiant, canllawiau a chyfnewid gwybodaeth, a gweithio mewn partneriaeth, mewn gwirionedd, ar draws sectorau. Mae hwnna'n rhan hollbwysig o'r ffordd rydyn ni'n cynnig i atal tannau gwyllt mewn ffordd.

Mae'r wybodaeth leol sydd ar gael yn y tirweddau dynodedig ac, yn ehangach, o safbwynt y wybodaeth sydd gan ffermwyr, sydd gan gominwyr, porwyr, rheolwyr tir, yn hynod, hynod o bwysig. Mae hwnna'n rhan hanfodol o'r ffordd rydyn ni'n medru dod o hyd i ddatrysiadau penodol ar gyfer tirweddau. Ac yn hynny o beth, mae yna rwydweithiau sydd yn bodoli'n barod, fel Cyswllt Ffermio, Ffermio Bro a'r gwasanaeth natur y buasai'n medru efallai chwarae rôl gryfach wrth feithrin sgiliau a rhannu arferion da.

Felly, yn debyg eto i Dr Ieuan Joyce, does gen i ddim tystiolaeth i'w chynnig sy'n dangos bod ailwlychu ddim yn effeithiol neu yn gwneud unrhyw niwed, ond o safbwynt sicrhau ein bod ni'n bod mor effeithiol â phosib, mae ein tystiolaeth ni'n cynnig y buasai asesiad cenedlaethol o sgiliau a'r gallu sy'n ymwneud â thannau gwyllt yn helpu i nodi'r bylchau ac i'w hamlygu nhw a dangos lle rydyn ni angen gweithredu ymhellach. Ond hefyd, yn sylfaenol, dylai ailwlychu, felly, fod yn rhan o wydnwch i dannau gwyllt, ond dydy o ddim, efallai, yn addas i'w ystyried yn ymyriad annibynnol ac fel yr unig beth y dylem ni fod yn ei wneud. Mae angen ystyried hydroleg ochr yn ochr â rheoli llystyfiant, pori, mynediad a rheolaeth hirdymor. Diolch.

Diolch yn fawr. John, do you have a National Sheep Association perspective on this rewetting?

No. As the only farmer—well, the only farming representative in the room—we're not against rewetting as such. It obviously only applies in the Molinia situation and not in the bracken situation. So, it's part of the toolbox, obviously, as I have read all the literature. Our bottom line is that graziers shouldn't lose out, and I think you'd expect that from a farming organisation. But, yes, it should be doable. There's plenty of experience in methodology. I do a lot of hill walking in my spare time, and I've come across examples on Dartmoor in the west Pennines, and in Scotland. It's not a difficult thing to do, but it involves a certain amount of training for the boys and girls that are driving the diggers. That's about all I've got to say on the issue: it is part of the toolbox.

Okay. Anna, do you want to come back on any of these points?

No. I thought somebody else had their hand up on the screen, but, no, I think that's really useful. I think that's key, that this is part of the solution. But also, then, it's who delivers this and how do we support people on the land to be part of being able to deliver some of this stuff.

Yes. I know Dr Joyce wants to come back. Really quickly from me, I suppose, it's the amounts of public funding going into it as well, and sometimes what we've seen is huge amounts of public funding going into rewetting and it's not actually done the job—it sounds very good, 'We're going to pump millions into rewetting', but, actually, it doesn't deliver. I know from personal experience—. I know Dr Joyce is with us, but I've looked, and, in the Elan valley, it's actually the right rewetting done in the right place, which actually holds the water, rather than blanketing it everywhere. Is that something that, I don't know, Professor Joyce, you could pick up on, some of the experience that I think that Elan valley have actually had, about how they've done it, with the topography of the land, actually working with what you've got, rather that just the blanket approach of doing it everywhere?

Okay. Sorry—yes, I'll come in, then. Thank you, James. I think there are elements of that that are very true, and targeting your peatland restoration with the diggers—because it's so expensive, that needs to be done very carefully and in a very targeted way. I did want to raise our experience of Penglaneinon, which is in the papers, just coming back to the 'Is rewetting effective?' thing, and the answer is 'yes', rewetting is, as part of a wider solution, a wider toolkit. And you'll see in our papers the photo from Penglaneinon, where the rewetted areas have clearly stopped the fire in its tracks. But they wouldn't have been effective if there weren't also measures in other areas surrounding that wetland to stop the fires on other boundaries. So, there's a track against the Sitka spruce, and that was used by the fire service as a very clear way of stopping the fire in its tracks. There were—. Even something as simple as quad-bike tracks, where the Molinia have been knocked back because quad bikes had been running across, that was enough to provide a—. It wouldn't have stopped the fire on its own, but it did provide enough to enable the fire service to get in there and say, 'The fire's much lighter, less dense, less intense here; we can stop it at this point.'

So, our Penglaneinon experience really reiterates the toolbox-of-measures approach that we need in terms of creating a defensive system, reducing fuel loading through cutting, through rewetting, through targeted grazing. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to come back to targeted grazing, James, at some point. I won't go on about that now, unless you'd like me to.

No, we will come back to that, Dr Joyce. I know Niamh's got a quick question on rewetting, and I think David will actually lead us off, then, on grazing.

Diolch. It's just going back to what, I think, you said, Dr Joyce, that you might be getting funding from Dŵr Cymru when it comes to rewetting peatlands. I wasn't aware of this. I was just wondering if you could go—

Yes. I'm possibly overstepping and shouldn't have said that. I'm not sure.

Oh, sorry.

It's my fault. There are discussions going on in terms of looking at funding from other streams, and particularly, obviously, because the Elan valley estate is a Dŵr Cymru catchment, it's owned by Dŵr Cymru, it's of particular interest to them. So, it's a sort of 'watch this space', and I apologise to Dŵr Cymru if I shouldn't have said anything.

That's okay. Diolch.

We're discussing potentially commercially sensitive information in a committee meeting, but we won't hold that against you, Dr Joyce. We'll move on now to questions on grazing, and over to you, David.

I'm interested in the types of grazing that would be beneficial and, basically, the role of commoners as well.

Who wants to kick off? John.

Yes, okay. When I last came to the Senedd, about three years ago, it was to a committee considering the sustainable farming scheme and commons. I think I said at the end of that that, if it wasn't included, it was going to be a missed opportunity, that the Senedd was not going to meet its targets, and that it was a pity, actually, also that there were no members of this committee, as it was then, present at that meeting. Actually, I was thinking about peat on the commons and the amount of peat there is. I wasn't thinking about fires at all. So I was right for the wrong reasons.

From my point of view, and I may be a bit out of touch on this, commons legislation is medieval, or even pre-medieval, and it's stuck in aspic. If you choose to confront it, I think you're going to be in for quite a big job, because there are all manners of commons throughout Wales. I think in Felinfoel, on the outskirts of Llanelli, there's a common right in the middle of there that is actually just a suburban park now. But we've come to this meeting today because we've been talking to the fire service for three or more years, and we've been giving them platforms—most recently at the Royal Welsh Show. We had a representative of the Gower commons there then, and they were very concerned about the fire risk. That's a different problem to the big upland commons. We had a figure at that meeting three years ago that commons were 10 per cent of the land area of Wales. I don't know if that's true, but we bandied it about furiously that day, and nobody challenged it, so it's stuck. But, yes, you're not going to achieve much without commons, and yet commons will be a problem and have to be treated differently to private hills, at least at the start.

I think, on David's point, it was about what sort of grazing would you say has a role on commons, as such. Did I hear you say that you want grazing rights on commons?

We've been digging, and the policy officer in the NSA has been sending me more links as I've driven down this morning, so he's really going for it, looking from further south, in the Mediterranean area, and one or two papers from California. There's an article from The Guardian, which he sent me yesterday, which was headlined, 'How grazing saved Barcelona', which I think is probably something of a Guardian inspired, exaggerated headline. But, yes, grazing does play its part, obviously. In our submission here, we showed a photo taken from one side of Rhayader and the hillside on the other side of Rhayader, where there was a grazed field that hadn't burnt, and yet everything else had. So, grazing is an important part.

I must say there are all sorts of conflicts. If you get cattle out onto the hills—and we have virtually no cattle on the hills in Wales—it will help with bracken, it will help with Molinia, but it's not easy if you're going to also rewet areas, because cattle are heavy beasts and sink. So, yes, there are conflicts. It's going to be difficult to get more cattle out in the hills as long as BSE—not BSE, as long as TB continues as a problem. But the BSE 25 years ago is also part of the problem because it reduced cattle numbers, particularly in my area.

Okay. Thank you. I'll come back to you in the room, James, but I'm going online to—. Naomi, do you want to come in on this point at all?

Yes, please.

Diolch. Rydym ni hefyd yn gweld bod pori priodol yn un o'r dulliau mwyaf effeithiol a chynaliadwy sydd ar gael i leihau llwythi tanwydd yn y tirweddau a'r risg o danau gwyllt. Eto, rydym ni'n ystyried pori fel rhan o'r pecynnau offer sydd ar gael ar gyfer rheoli tir integredig, a bod hynny, unwaith eto, ochr yn ochr â'r ymyraethau y gwnaethom ni gyfeirio atyn nhw yn gynharach, fel torri, adfer cynefinoedd, a, lle ei bod hi'n briodol, llosgi dan reolaeth. Mae yna dystiolaeth o'r tirweddau fod pori cadwriaethol wedi'i dargedu yn dangos ei fod o'n lleihau croniad tanwydd ac yn gwella gwytnwch. Mae yna brojectau penodol sydd wedi cael eu datblygu yn y tirweddau dynodedig—projectau pori cadwriaethol penodol llwyddiannus, gan gynnwys defnyddio bridiau traddodiadol a gwydn yn y tirweddau ac yn yr ucheldir hefyd. Mae Ffermio Bro, y cynllun amaeth-amgylcheddol presennol yn y tirweddau dynodedig, yn barod yn cefnogi adfer pori drwy ffensio, seilwaith dŵr a thechnoleg ffensio rhithwir, felly'n defnyddio coleri ac ati, er mwyn galluogi pori bridiau priodol, addas a chynhenid o wartheg yn yr ucheldir.

Mae o'n werth cyffwrdd â chyllid—dwi'n gobeithio y byddwn ni'n dod yn ôl at hyn yn nes ymlaen, ond—yr angen ar gyfer cyllid refeniw ar gyfer hyfforddi ffermwyr, rheolwyr tir, cominwyr ac yn y blaen ar faterion rheolaeth pori hirdymor, yn enwedig mewn ardaloedd risg uchel. Mae yna heriau ymarferol, wrth gwrs, gan gynnwys sicrhau da byw addas, bridiau addas, ar gyfer tir comin a safleoedd sydd yn anodd eu ffensio. Rydym ni'n gwybod bod yna heriau llywodraethiant a rheolaeth hanesyddol ar nifer o'r comins yng Nghymru, ac mae hwnna'n rhywbeth rydym ni'n gynyddol ymwybodol ohono fo wrth ymdrin â materion tanau gwyllt.

Unwaith eto, mae'n hollol, hollol hanfodol ein bod ni'n cynnwys porwyr, cominwyr, ffermwyr a rheolwyr tir wrth gynllunio'r ymyraethau rydym ni eisiau eu gwneud yn y maes yma, ac yn eu cynnwys nhw yn y ffordd rydym ni'n cynllunio ar gyfer gwytnwch tanau gwyllt. Mae'r wybodaeth sydd ganddyn nhw am y tirweddau, am yr arferion ac am y traddodiadau ac ati yn holl, holl bwysig, ac, mewn ffordd, mae'n rhy hwyr eu cynnwys nhw ar ôl inni benderfynu ar y ffordd rydym ni eisiau mynd ati i ymyrryd.

Mae tir comin yn dangos yn glir pam mae angen gwytnwch tanau gwyllt a pham mae angen iddo fo ymestyn ymhellach na pharseli unigol o dir. Fel rydym ni wedi'i weld eleni, yn ystod y flwyddyn ryfeddol yma o danau gwyllt, dydy'r tannau ddim yn parchu ffiniau perchnogaeth neu ffiniau tirweddau dynodedig. Dydy'r systemau pori, llystyfiant, hydroleg mawn, mynediad na tân gwyllt yn dilyn y ffiniau yna, ac mae'n bwysig iawn ein bod ni'n meddwl yn ehangach, ein bod ni'n meddwl ar raddfa dirweddol a'n bod ni'n ystyried y trefniadau llywodraethu a rheoli cymhleth sy'n berthnasol i nifer o'r ardaloedd yma, ac yn benodol comins. Felly, mae buddsoddi mewn mynediad, dŵr, rheoli da byw a seilwaith arall yn fudd i systemau pori hyfyw ac i reoli tanau gwyllt pan fydd argyfwng yn digwydd. Diolch.

Diolch. James in the room, and then I'll come to Dr Joyce online.

Diolch, James. I think it's really important, when we're talking about the role of grazing, to look at sources of ignition, and, in the short term, we need to lower that risk of ignition in terms of the landscape and the vegetation that's before us. The risk is about the make-up of vegetation. So, dry, broken, thatchy growth is highly flammable, and, once that can ignite, no matter the source, then you can get an intensity building and a wildfire spreading. And how that wildfire spreads and the intensity of it is dictated by the complexity of the landscape and the structure of that vegetation. I've got some stats here breaking down different sorts of habitats and how they burn, to what extent and to what intensity, which I'd be happy to share either verbally or as a follow-up.

I think that we need to look at the fact that there's not a one size fits all. So, you're going to have areas where mixed grazing is going to be a really important part of the future, and then you're going to have areas perhaps where we've tried to deliver multiple benefits in habitat restoration, where we might focus on larger animals, cattle and ponies, perhaps even pigs. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that larger animals have a very important role to play in reducing fire risk by creating natural firebreaks, because they're heavier, so they can break up vegetation, they can create areas of bare ground, which won't burn, and they can tackle larger vegetation.

There's a great study by the GrazeLIFE project, which was on mainland Europe, and that studied the relationship between native wild herbivores and wildfire. It investigated the links between vegetation structure, fire risk, fire frequency and fire damage. The study showed that wild and semi-wild herbivores such as horses and cattle can reduce wildfire risk through their grazing patterns by encouraging diverse ground cover and creating natural firebreaks that can prevent fire from spreading following ignition, limiting the amount that is burned. That's one of a number of studies at present. I think we need to acknowledge that that ignition problem or that ignition threat is short term and there are actions we need to take and take quickly and support.

This whole approach to wildfire resilience and looking at landscape resilience and how that also impacts flood resilience is a long-term project and it's going to take time to get the arrangement and the design of the landscape that we need. That needs to be properly funded and committed to. In the interim, there is going to be a transition phase, and that transition phase is going to involve mechanical intervention, the cutting of man-made firebreaks. How that's designed and where that fits into fire management plans and who's involved and who has a say through the wildfire board is going to be really key, I think.

Grazing is absolutely key for reducing fuel load. I will talk about the Elan valley and the estate just because that's what I know, that's why I'm here. Obviously, it's an open landscape, we're not allowed to fence through legislation. It's similar to a common but not a common. Our stocking levels are set—basically, because it's a site of special scientific interest, they're set through our SSSI management plan. Historically, they've been reduced significantly over the years. Clearly, there's been undergrazing in some areas. But we've had to and we've supported and still support lower grazing levels, because we have a mosaic of habitats. In order to protect and restore heathland and the bog areas then we need lower grazing. But that has meant, on the other hand, that there are areas that are undergrazed because of the lower grazing intensity to protect the more pristine habitats, more important habitats.

The solution for all of this is we've got to look more at cattle and the ability to do targeted grazing with collars on cattle. It's the only way that we can unlock and cut through the Gordian knot of how to manage an open landscape and reduce the fuel load in specific areas to create a defensive network of firebreaks and defendable areas to reduce the extent of fire when it happens. Collars on cattle are the only solution that I can see, apart from cutting. Cutting may well be a part of the solution, mechanical cutting, but it's not practical across a lot of our hill land. It feels like we're throwing fossil fuels at a problem that natural solutions like grazing, with other benefits, can help resolve for us. I'm a big fan, and we've got much more experience now in the Elan valley of using cattle collars. They've worked really well and have been really effective and do allow you to target areas for grazing.

There are challenges with cattle. John mentioned TB. The economics of cattle can be really challenging, particularly if you've got a short grazing season on the hill. Where do they go in the winter? Grazing in the summer is fine, but then they've still got to be overwintered somewhere. The economics of that can be difficult. The optional layers through the SFS aren't looking promising at all, with the £30 per hectare payment for cattle grazing just woefully inadequate in terms of incentivising and compensating farmers for the really good work they could otherwise be doing. It's just not enough money to overcome the financial costs of keeping cattle. The benefits of keeping cattle are massive in terms of reducing fire risk and improving for nature, but the cost entirely gets lumped upon the farmer's head. At £30 per hectare, it's just nowhere near enough money for any farmer to justify putting cattle on a hill, however much they might want to.

Thank you. John, you had a follow-up on this.

It's almost to reiterate what was just said. I was lucky enough to be able to speak to somebody from NRW with regard to the issues that we had in Gower. What Dr Joyce was talking about is exactly what is happening in Gower. I suppose the problem is anything that relates more specifically to common land, and obviously the law is very, very complex. Somebody mentioned somebody from Gower, who actually was one of the commoners there, and we've been speaking to them at some length, along with Natural Resources Wales, who are looking to do an experiment just on this specifically in Gower, because the higher parts of Gower are high enough for it to be such. Because it hasn't been farmed as such for a long time properly, the common has pretty much disappeared or is disappearing really quite quickly, and obviously the fire loads are getting quite high. The problem I've found is that of 126 people or houses that would have commoners' rights, only about eight or so were using it, and it's the problem of getting people to come in and use it, because the people moving into the area are not interested, the people who are buying the houses. So ultimately, whilst what we're talking about, what you're describing, would create a far better environment in Gower—it would stop the burn loads and increase biodiversity and all the things that we'd want—I suppose everything comes at cost, whether it's mechanical cutting or using fire, but it comes down to who pays, really, and who's going to pay, and that's the thing.

Before you answer that question, I'll bring Vikki in, and perhaps we'll do the two together.

Thank you. Just to come back to Dr Joyce's point there about the payments for cattle and your comments on the sustainable farming scheme, and just to probe a little deeper there, really, as to whether you feel that when the optional and collaborative layers are fully worked up, there's space to consider the role of cattle in land management, and particularly around wildfire resilience there, or whether you feel that there needs to be amendments to the universal layer in order to really get that incentive in.

I'll take that point first, if that's okay, John, and we'll come back to yours after. Dr Joyce.

Thank you, Vikki. It's a really good question. For me, I think we're all working our way through the SFS. I'm a farmer as well. There's a lot to take in, and we're all feeling our way through it. With that in mind, I think the universal layer is probably as good as it's going to get at this point, and we should be focusing, for fire risk, our attentions on the optional and collaborative layer. There's scope within the optional layer, there's scope for cutting for firebreaks, there's scope for incentivising to a very limited extent cattle grazing, mixed grazing. So, there are little bits in the optional layer.

Really importantly as well, what we need, which I suppose would come through the collaborative layer—. In our landscape with 28 different tenancies and then bordering farmers with commoners all in one open landscape, what we would really need through the collaborative layer is support with working with our neighbours, trying to work out with our neighbours where the best places are for doing the defensive measures that we need and making sure that they're joined up and lined up across the whole landscape, so that where one farmer has decided that they can manage to cut a firebreak or do some targeted grazing and another farmer's got some peatland restoration, we can join the dots, so that there's the ability to create a unified linear or nearly linear integrated fire defensive system across the whole landscape that we can use.

Lovely. Does anybody want to pick up John's point?

I was going to come back to this later, because I thought it applied more to the later questions.

We can bring it up there, if you want.

The whole thing of the sustainable farming scheme and collaborative working, I think, was put on the back burner, and yet it need not have been. I was going to refer, and I will refer when we come to it in greater detail, to the Pontbren project. I know there must be reasons why in places like this the Pontbren project was not taken up as an example of how to do things collaboratively. But it is there, and there's a Welsh Government report on it, which is 52 pages long and easily found on an internet search. That goes into how the farmers were stimulated to work together and how they worked together, because that's going to be the major problem. It's a social problem. It's not particularly a problem here in Government; it's more down in the valleys and in the hills. But what I would take from Pontbren is how you get farmers involved together and how they get stimulated by what they are doing. Pontbren was more about flood control, which, right now, in a dry autumn, is well out of fashion. But when you consider how to do collaborative working in the SFS, then, yes, that's going to obviously come back into play.

We're going to come on to policy mechanisms and financing. And then we've got one area I know Vikki wants to—

Also, although we're talking about open hill, or have been for the last 10, 15 minutes, Pontbren was more about upland enclosed. But I would urge you to read the Welsh Government's report.

Lovely. Naomi.

Diolch. Roeddwn i ond eisiau ategu, o safbwynt y tirweddau dynodedig a Tirweddau Cymru, mewn ffordd, bwysigrwydd y cydweithredu yna. Mae Ffermio Bro, y cynllun amaeth-amgylcheddol sy'n cael ei weithredu o fewn y tirweddau dynodedig ar hyn o bryd, yn cynnig fframwaith gwych ar gyfer hynny. Mi fydd yna ac mae yna enghreifftiau yn bodoli'n barod o effaith y cydweithredu yna, ac mi fydd hynny ar gael dros gyfnod o dair blynedd. Mae'n aneglur ar hyn o bryd beth fydd yn digwydd i Ffermio Bro ar ôl gwanwyn 2028, ond yn sylfaenol, mae creu newid systemaidd ar raddfa dirweddol, creu gwydnwch ar y raddfa yna, yn dibynnu'n llwyr ar fedru cydweithredu ar raddfa fawr. Felly, jest i gefnogi'r pwynt yna. Diolch.

Lovely. Grand. Do you want to come quickly back, James?

Yes, just a quick point. I just wanted to really support the need for facilitated advice. I think commons are an important cultural part of Wales's rural life, really, and the commoners that I've met while working across 20 years of practical conservation have been very proud of their involvement in their local area. Yes, there might be 100 registered commoners and only five or eight that are active, but for those that are active, the common is often an important part of their business model and a chance to work collaboratively.

I think we should look at how we can bring people together and then also look at the importance of revenue payments, because in a lot of schemes like Ffermio Bro, you can get a lot of money for capital interventions, fencing off rivers, but that's not really helping you to shift your business models and deal with the hassles and the complications of bringing in cattle.

When it comes to commons, we've heard that they make up quite a significant portion of Wales's land use. Quite a lot are ultimately owned by local authorities and they just don't have the resource to engage in dealing with commoners and supporting their commoners, and perhaps that's something we need to look at. And then again, about 55,000 acres—it might be a bit more—of common is owned by the Crown Estate in Wales, and they have a strategy that says that they have to invest in nature, climate and communities. Perhaps they could be encouraged to provide some money and show some leadership and best practice.

We'll move on now to questions from Vikki. I know you want to talk on a specific area, so I'll let you lead off on this part.

Thank you. James, you've already given us quite a bit of an overview about diversifying vegetation and the benefits that you think that that will bring. I don't know if we've got time for much more detail on that, but, really, my key question on that is around the fact that there are other experts like Dr Richard Byrne from Harper Adams University who have raised the fact that if we do get this diversified vegetation, then vegetation management is crucial to ensure that it doesn't inadvertently increase the risk of wildfires. So, I wondered what your view was on that and what that vegetation management would look like. Are we just talking about grazing, for example, or something else?

I think we have to zoom out. I was lucky enough to be able to go to the climate change and resilience summit where we heard from the Climate Change Committee, and they were saying that we've got embedded climate change where we're looking at 2 degrees of warming and needing to adapt to that. It raised the point that, currently, Wales has no statutory adaption targets, and I think I've seen a freedom of information request that says that we only have two civil servants that are working full time on adaption and resilience. So, we're operating on frameworks and good intentions with a lot of this, and I think that what that's leading us towards is that it's going to be impossible to create fireproof landscapes as an absolute. We have to look at how we reduce ignition—so, that's the prevention piece that you've been talking to the fire service about—how we build resilience, which is a long-term commitment and involves a transition phase, to then how we deal with response, which means properly resourced communities and emergency responders.

So, going back to your question, I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all. I think we need to look at landscapes as a whole and look at the right intervention in the right place. We've got a lot of mapping in Wales that shows where nature is intact and where there are opportunities to join that up, and if we think through the lens of landscape resilience for flood and fire, we can invest through revenue and capital in interventions that deliver for climate, nature, and community, through creating rich landscapes that are accessible, that help people's health and well-being, and that also help tackle some of these problems. So, we very much, as a group of organisations with Wales Environment Link, want to see rewetting. We want to see the creation of and a focus on nature-based solutions. So, that means agroforestry and tactical planting of woodlands—broadleaf woodlands in particular—and restoration of hydrology. So, that can be wetland creation, creation of wet grassland and the restoration of floodplains, and, where appropriate—and it is a live policy piece—the reintroduction of beaver, which is being worked through the Wales beaver forum.

And then we need to look at that short-term problem with the highly flammable vegetation, which is the dry and broken vegetation. That is removed through grazing. And where we're looking at the interventions that might speak to the restoration of 30 per cent of ecosystems, we definitely, as a group of organisations in WEL, advocate using larger animals to do that and tackling that head on, and we would like people to recognise that, in doing that, there is going to be a transition phase. So, we are going to need to look at what the options are with mechanical intervention or the targeted grazing, like Ieuan spoke of, using cattle collars and the technology that we now have.

Does anybody else want to come in on Vikki's point? Online, anyone? No. Okay. Any further questions?

Can I just ask one?

Yes.

You specifically mentioned the introduction of beaver. I believe they're in Devon at the moment and further in parts of the north of England. But Natural Resources Wales said to me that, legally, they don't exist in Wales, although they do, but they haven't, because there's a licence that's required, I believe, is there, to introduce them?

Yes. They were afforded legal status and protection just at the end of the last Government, and the Wales beaver forum was formed by the last Government, and we had the first meeting under this new Government just a few weeks ago. So, that's bringing together a wide and diverse range of stakeholders to develop a beaver strategy for Wales, which looks at coexistence measures and where we might see the return and how that's managed. There are about 50 beavers in Wales, scattered—

There are already?

—largely in the west.

Okay. Thank you.

Grand. Now, we'll move on now to—. Did you want to come in, Anna? No.

Only if we're finishing, if the whole session is going to end, but not on that point.

Not on that point. We're going to move on, then, to policy mechanisms and funding. Paul showed an interest in leading on this area for us.

Yes, so I was very interested in Dr Joyce saying that the universal layer of the SFS is about as good as we're going to get. That feels a bit—. Given that that's where the bulk of the money is—70 per cent, I think, of the money is in the universal layer—and the other layers are not really rolled out yet, what can we do about that? Should we accept that or should we be, kind of, encouraging the Welsh Government to look for adaptions to the universal layer, or maybe making those other layers rolled out quicker or something, so that the SFS can be used as a way of encouraging the sorts of things we need to see, the things we've talked about just now? And, I guess, allied to that is where else would the money come from? You know, there's been talk of the Crown Estate, but where is the money coming from, I guess? That's the fundamental point that I'm raising.

I'll start with you, John, because you said earlier you had lots to say on this matter.

I'm having a lot of fun at the moment wading through my universal actions. It's quite an exploration into the depths of my computer, I must say. It's kind of out of date. I did a wee course on handling the backs of sheep, which I learned about at open days in the 1980s and which I still do. The only difference now is that I've got to write it down and it's got to be available for various people to see as they come through the farm. I'm not a fan of the universal actions where they are, but that's a personal opinion, as I find them. But they're there, I think, as a compromise that came from various troubles in setting the whole thing up.

But, yes, if you want to do collaborative working—and I think that was where I ended my last visit—with farmers, each farmer having to do the depths of their universal actions is entirely the wrong way to start, because it turns you in on yourself. It doesn't allow you to explore working with your neighbours. I may say that working with my neighbours is not a subject where I would go to sleep easily whilst thinking about it, but there we are. I love them all dearly, but, yes, as to working with them, we all have our own ideas. But, yes, I think the SFS, for reasons of its birth, is not pointed in a direction that's going to be easy for you in this place to change, I suspect, but it's got to if you want to address the problems we're addressing today.

Okay. Dr Joyce.

We are hoping in the Elan Valley to be able to apply for the new INRS scheme when it comes out, I think now coming in the autumn. And we would hope to be able to use that to deliver some of the collaborative thinking that is needed in order to put together what I've been talking about in terms of defensive fire structures across the landscape. They're not quite the words I'm wanting, because it sounds a little bit 'civil engineering'. I don't mean it that way. I just mean some way of co-ordinating firebreaks in a logical and integrated way across our landscape, across the different holdings and across the different hills and boundaries that we have. We're hoping that the INRS, through the collaborative scheme, will enable us to do that.

I'm really hesitantly going to move on to the other question, though, which was where money might also come in, because I may have overstepped before when I was talking about Dŵr Cymru. In principle, on a water catchment like ours, or in any place where land is owned by certain organisations, with peatland, it's their asset—the land is their asset. In a water catchment, the benefits of the peat for the water quality and quantity end up going to the company itself—Dŵr Cymru, Severn Trent, Hafren Dyfrdwy, whoever it is. So, there's a perfect logic, I think, to be expecting, anticipating that, in the future, organisations that are benefiting from nature, from peatlands in particular, might be expected to chip in to help and to support their management and their restoration in the future.

Now, you may have gathered I think that's already under way, potentially, hopefully—fingers crossed that that sort of thinking is under way. But I would also point to as and when water becomes more of a Welsh matter than it has been in the past in terms of the new Welsh Ofwat, then that will clearly be something that needs thinking about as well in the future, potentially by your committee, about what the costs are going to be and what the benefits are going to be from directing future funding rounds at peatland restoration via the water, as opposed to via the SFS.

One question that I have is that, obviously, as land managers, you're responsible for some of that land—so, Eryri and the Elan valley, for example—and you have to work with your tenants as well, who manage the land on your behalf. I'm just interested how that relationship works, because, obviously, if you're a tenant, you need to try and make money to sustain your business as well, and then there comes the balancing act, doesn't it, between the aims of trusts—Eryri National Park, the Elan Valley Trust—and what the Crown Estate wants, for example, but they've got to do that in collaboration with people who need to make a living off the land as well. So, I'm just interested in how that works in practice and how you can work out those conflicts, because I know from my own constituency that there automatically are barriers when, say, a certain organisation wants to take stock out, for example, but then farmers say, 'Well, if you reduce stocking numbers, then my business becomes unsustainable'. So, I'm just wondering how you think that could be managed within the SFS or any changes to the SFS, because if we're going to reduce fire load, which you've all talked about, and reducing the fire load is done through grazing and other methods, then you need to do that in collaboration with tenants, who need to make money as well. So, I'm just interested in how you work that out with the people who work the land that you manage.

I think, James, you've hit the nail on the head. It's absolutely critical that we are able to incentivise, to make it something that's worth while for farmers to do as part of their business, and there's just no getting away from that. It has to be done in collaboration with farmers and not against them. I think we also need to be clear eyed about the different requirements, the different objectives. In the Elan valley, for example, there are clearly objectives for water quality and quantity, but those, in terms of land management, don't necessarily strictly align with objectives for farming and for agriculture. There's cross-over, but there's not an absolutely strict alignment between the two. So, for example, a cool burn, or even a heavier burn, might in the short term provide farming benefits. The regrowth of Molinia, actually, you can get quite good sheep growth rates, cattle growth rates, for the year that you get a burn. But it’s really, really detrimental to the peat, and therefore really, really detrimental to the water quality and quantity over future years.

So, there's a misalignment between the objectives a little bit, and clearly we need incentives and ways to make sure that the way farmers do it—. Ultimately, it’s farmers who are going to manage the land, so we need to incentivise them to manage the land in ways that support the objectives across the piece, and clearly, in the Elan valley, water is probably the paramount objective. Economically, there’s very little doubt that the Elan valley is way more economically significant for water than it is for agriculture, and so we need to make sure that we find ways of being able to incentivise farmers to farm for water, as opposed to just and simply farming for sheep and cattle.

Okay. I know that Naomi wanted to speak, and then I'll come to James in the room. Is that okay? So, Naomi and then James.

Diolch yn fawr. Mae'r cwestiwn yn taro'r hoelen ar ei phen o safbwynt lot o'r gwaith mae Tirweddau Cymru a'r tirweddau unigol o fewn Tirweddau Cymru yn ei wneud ar hyn o bryd o safbwynt pwysigrwydd gweithio mewn partneriaeth. Yn Eryri, mae Awdurdod Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri yn berchen ar lai nag 1 y cant o diriogaeth y parc cenedlaethol, sy'n 823 o filltiroedd sgwâr. Felly mae'r hyn rydyn ni'n medru ei reoli'n uniongyrchol yn fychan iawn, iawn o gymharu ag arwynebedd y parc cenedlaethol. Felly, mewn gwirionedd, does yna ddim byd o gwbl yn medru cael ei gyflawni heb i ni weithio efo'r tirfeddianwyr, a rheini o wahanol sectorau, yn cynnwys Ystâd y Goron, Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru, Llywodraeth Cymru, yr Ymddiriedolaeth Genedlaethol. Ond, wrth gwrs, mae mwyafrif llethol y tir mewn perchnogaeth breifat. Felly, rydyn ni wedi bod yn gweithio'n galed dros nifer fawr o flynyddoedd erbyn hyn i feithrin y perthnasau da yna ac i ddatblygu ein rôl ni i fod yn hwyluso ac yn medru cynnull trawstoriad eang o sectorau, sefydliadau, unigolion, tirfeddianwyr, rheolwyr tir, ac yn y blaen, at ei gilydd ac i alluogi'r cydweithio yna. Felly, mae hwnna'n rhywbeth rydyn ni’n ei weld fel rôl rydyn ni mewn lle arbennig o dda i fedru ei gyflawni, ym maes tanau gwyllt yn sicr, ond mewn meysydd eraill hefyd, ac yn sicr yn eang ar draws materion rheoli tir.

O ran beth mae hynny'n ei olygu o ran y cynllun ffermio cynaliadwy, ac ati, rydyn ni yn sicr yn gweld bod angen cryfhau cefnogaeth i ffermwyr, i borwyr ac i gominwyr. Fel dwi wedi sôn yn barod, mae Ffermio Bro yn y tirweddau dynodedig yn cynnig fframwaith da ar gyfer hynny'n barod, ac mi fydd yna yn sicr enghreifftiau i ddysgu ohonyn nhw yn dod o'r cynllun yna, ac yn gweld hefyd fod y cynllun ffermio cynaliadwy yn mynd i fedru dysgu o brofiadau Ffermio Bro ac ehangu a chynyddu a gwella'r cyfleoedd yna, gobeithio, ar gyfer cydweithredu a gweithredu ar raddfa dirweddol. Diolch.

I support many of the points previously made. The collaborative and optional layer is just £100 million per year. You've got a collaborative layer that's now trying to bring together what was previously rural development funding with landscape-scale collaboration. Perhaps we need a firmer indication of the importance of that landscape-scale collaboration in developing resilience to wildfire and flooding, and also a clear indication that investing in nature and nature recovery offers a good return on investment.

There are various reports, and the Climate Change Committee's evidence comes to mind, that nature-based solutions offer a return on investment from 2:1 to 10:1. So, that's a good use of public funding. The Welsh Government currently do have a nature finance consultation open, to bring in the question about where else might the money come from. I think Wales has been quite cautious about the role of private finance in landscape recovery and rural resilience, so it's really pleasing to see that that's moving. I think there are a lot of lessons we can learn from other nations, but again, there are only two to three officials working on that full time, and if we're serious about moving quickly, perhaps we need to look at that.

I think there are other funds available for the sorts of measures that we want, like Nature Networks funding, the national peat action plan, and the woodland grant scheme. But when you're starting to look at the collaborative layer or collaborative actions and working with your neighbours, you've got four or five entry points there, and four or five entry points to schemes that are really complicated. Who helps bring people together to navigate that complexity? What's the level of support, and is there a one-stop shop for that? The third sector plays a role in that, but you've effectively farmed that out to philanthropy. How do we build and strengthen those ties within that?

And then, we've seen the Flood Re fund, which is funded by insurance. Perhaps we'll move into a situation where we might be able to have a fire re fund or a fund that looks at extreme weather events. Again, going back to the Wales Environment Link ask, I'd just really urge us to think about developing a very specific climate resilience package in the SFS, so people that are worried and want to take action can get a 'does what it says on the tin' set of options. Then, I think we should be really seriously considering putting in a separate fund for extreme resilience adaption that's wider than just the SFS, that's open to local communities and landowners of all forms.

Lovely. Are there any questions from Members on these points? No. Lovely. If you want to, Anna, I'm not going to stop you.

I don't know if it's even a question, really. It's a bit left-field. But there's something here about the social infrastructure in these places as well, and communities. We had a debate on the voluntary sector yesterday. I'm not saying it should be part of the SFS or formal schemes or anything, and obviously those are really key, but there's something about also making sure we're investing in sports facilities and young farmers clubs and all of those spaces where communities come together. We've heard a lot about isolation in farming communities and mental health, et cetera. There's something about this. It's just a comment, really, I suppose, about those relationships across farming communities and landowners, et cetera. It feels like this is key to support different ways of working.

There are some paragraphs in that Pontbren report. A lot of it is based on quotations from the farmers, and there are a couple of quotations where they say working together on that Pontbren project was like what the chapel must have been to the previous generation. So, yes, to a certain extent, I think that's true. There are positive outcomes, if we can get there, in unexpected places.

Thank you. Andrew, did you have a question?

People have talked about the SFS at length. The reality is that the SFS budget is wholly inadequate to make the changes that we've heard today, is it not, and there does need to be either a substantial uplift in the SFS budget, or, as you introduced there, James, a greater use of private capital from the markets, basically.

There's £350 million, isn't there, and the Wales Environment Link's work suggests that £575 million a year would be what we need to achieve the targets and the aspirations for that.

It's more stable than that across the border, and I think we're thankful for that. But, yes, it's essentially not actually doing very much in terms of creating new landscapes and new resiliences or anything like that, and it would need a lot more funding to do that, from somewhere.

So on the £30 a hectare that was talked of earlier, you wouldn't get out of bed for that.

If you wanted to get cattle out on the hill, it probably would be best done collaboratively, and maybe in joint ownership. Because you need decent numbers to make any impression. So, you're talking about 100 suckler cows, and that's going to cost a lot of money, and then you're going to need the facilities for them in the winter. So, yes, it needs a lot of seed funding, at least, but hopefully not perpetual to the same extent. But, yes, there is a resource issue.

Lovely. I'll bring Paul in, then Laura, and then I'll go to Naomi, and then we'll see how we're doing for time. But I'll take the two questions together now.

There's been a little bit of talk about private sector funding; you mentioned it, Andrew, and you mentioned it, James. How does that work? How does that look?

I'll bring Laura in quickly, and give you time to think about that one for a second.

Following on from what's just been said, what lessons can be learnt from other parts of the UK, or even further afield in other countries, about how they're dealing with it and how they're putting it into, for example, their version of the SFS?

I'll come to you, James, because one of those questions was asked to you, and then I'll come back to Naomi, because I think she had a point on the previous question.

With nature finance, you need to agree what are the terms, and there needs to be a clear message that that's welcome, because businesses are interested in investing, but they want certainty, and they want to know what the vehicle is for holding it. So, you need some sort of financial institution, and then you need payments designed that fit within the system so that you're not double funding work. The SFS needs to recognise where nature finance might come in over and above. And you need to design payments that offer a range of activity and outcomes.

There are various ways of doing it. It's not a real area of expertise for me, but, effectively, you can create holding pens and holding vehicles, at catchment scale, and then you can bring in finance from various sources and then put it out under a contract. Typically, green finance and nature finance would be looking for 30-year commitments, which some people find intimidating.

But picking up on Laura's point, what we've seen in England is that the higher level of the sustainable farming incentive sets people up to work collaboratively to identify shared outcomes and aspirations, and it funds the initial round of work and a facilitation. And then, the idea is that you will be ready to apply for private finance that will then become a 20 or 30-year funding arrangement.

I've studied financing nature is part of an MSc, and a lot of grand words are spoken about it but they're not always achievable, certainly in terms of tropical rainforests and whatever.

Naomi.

Diolch. Roeddwn i eisiau ymateb i’r pwynt a gafodd ei wneud ychydig funudau yn ôl ynglŷn â pherthnasau cymunedol a beth mae tanau gwyllt a’r drafodaeth yma yn golygu ar gyfer hynny. Dim ond i ategu’r pwynt, ac i ychwanegu ato, o safbwynt Tirweddau Cymru, mae’r tirweddau dynodedig sydd gennym ni wedi cael eu dynodi oherwydd y nodweddion tirweddol, bioamrywiaeth a threftadaeth ddiwylliannol sydd ganddyn nhw. Mae tanau gwyllt, wrth gwrs, yn fygythiad dinistriol iawn i’r nodweddion yna; mae’n nhw’n medru diflannu mewn unrhyw fath o dân gwyllt. Felly, mae’r tanau yn fygythiad i’r nodweddion ac i’r tirweddau, ond rydyn ni hefyd, yn ôl ein pwrpasau ni fel parciau cenedlaethol ac fel tirweddau cenedlaethol, i fod i feithrin lles cymunedol a lles economaidd yr ardaloedd. Mae'r tanau, wrth gwrs, yn fygythiad i hynny hefyd—i'r llesiant cymunedol ac i'r lles economaidd. Mae yna nifer o gymunedau poblog iawn yn byw ar gyrion ein tirweddau cenedlaethol ni, felly mae cydnabod ac adnabod mesurau lliniaru ac ataliol ar gyfer gwarchod lles y cymunedau yna yn rhan hollbwysig, buaswn i'n dweud, o'r ffordd y dylem ni fod yn ceisio gweithredu'n ataliol ynglŷn â thanau gwyllt.

Lovely. I think that is probably a lovely way to round off the session. I think time has beaten us yet again. I'd just like to thank our witnesses for coming in today. A transcript, the Record of Proceedings, will be sent to you to check for accuracy. But as I say, I'd just like to thank you all for coming in again today. We'll now just adjourn for a short break. I feel very sorry for the young people who just literally walked in to watch our proceedings. We're going to stop until 11:50. Thank you very much for coming in today. We'll now pause for a short break, for about 10 minutes. Diolch.

We're back now in our fourth agenda item in our wildfire resilience in Wales evidence sessions. This session is with the Met Office, and we'd like to welcome Dr Matthew Hort from the Met Office, who's come to talk to us today and answer our questions. So, welcome to the committee. We'll now need to move straight into questioning. So, our first set of questions is on forecasting and risk communication, and Niamh will lead us off in this section.

Diolch. My first question was to do with the fire severity index. I was wondering if you could outline how it played a role in determining how severe the wildfires could become. And following on from that as well, I had a question around how that data is displayed, because I note in the paper that it goes on Natural England's open access map, but it doesn't get posted anywhere for Wales. So, I just wanted to get more information as to why, even though it's England and Wales, it's on that website for England but there's nothing for us here.

Certainly. Okay, thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So, the fire severity index—it's a modelled product of how severe a fire could become if one were to start. So, it doesn't try to model if fires are going to occur. We're not trying to model things like human behaviour, for example. It's based on physics of the atmosphere, so it's really based on metrology, so things like dryness, humidity and how they affect wind speed and how they affect fine fuels, grasses, and dry them out. And therefore, if they're dry and a fire would start, it would spread more ferociously, it'd be harder to contain. So, the purpose is to help guide that aspect of fire response.

Just to give you some brief background, it is built off a system that was originally developed by the Canadians. It's actually a similar system to those used in many countries around the world for providing guidance on the potential severity of fires if they were to start. So, it's not just a UK-based system, although the Met Office did modify what we use to better represent the UK.

Okay, so moving on to answer the second part of your question, although I can provide more details about the FSI in particular if we want, it was originally developed for Natural Resources Wales and Natural England, or your predecessor to Natural Resources Wales. And you're right, it is presented on the Natural England webpage. They provide that facility for it and display it, and they fund that activity. We provide the data out to both them and, I believe, also Natural Resources Wales—or it could be provided. But Natural England do present it for Wales as well, so their website does show Wales, but we don't do that. So, that's down to the recipients of the service, if you like, to decide how they wish to actually display the data.

Can I go on?

Yes, you can carry on.

Thank you. Not a comment on you, but I wouldn't have thought to ever go onto Natural England's website to find that information for Wales. I'm sure quite a lot of other people will be in the same situation, especially when we've got Natural Resources Wales. So, have those conversations happened about putting it on Natural Resources Wales's website, or is there—? I know you can't speak on their behalf, but has there been a reluctance? Because that just seems a massive over—. Well, I can't understand still why we don't have that here for Wales, but it's all on England.

So, if I could step back very briefly. So, the fire severity index, the product we produce, is specifically to support the activities of Natural England and Natural Resources Wales as defined under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. It's not there to be looked at by others or to be used by others for other purposes. It was developed for that purpose, to allow them to manage access to land when there's fire risk. So, the purpose of displaying it on a website is for them to support. I think Natural England's rationale—and I can't speak for them, but I think their rationale—would be to support other land managers in understanding their decision-making process around restricting access to land. It's not for others—the public or other organisations—just to access just to see what the fire severity index is. And the work that has been done on developing it was focused on supporting that decision-making process, not on supporting, perhaps, other assessments of fire risk. And so, again, it could easily be over-interpreted would be my advice, and to not necessarily see it as, 'Oh, we should visualise this because this would support other decision-making processes.' I think we may come on to the daily hazard assessment, which is another product that supports another set of different decision-making processes, but we can explain that in due course.

Did that support your question or would you like to ask some more? I can't say—. Sorry, to go back—. Natural Resources Wales, I can't say whether they were reluctant to display it; I was not part of those conversations. We have a very good relationship with them, so I would anticipate that there would have been an open conversation. But, with all these things, it does take resource to do these things, and so I would guess that there just wasn't resource, but that is a guess. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks.

Anna.

I suppose it's building on that. I'm not sure if I'm saying it in the right place, but that sort of data, then, feels like a really big resource. And I know, on flooding, then, that data goes on DataMapWales so that people can see not just what might the risk be now, but can also look at years in advance and stuff to see the sorts of risks that they're talking about and plan around it. So, is it—? Given that you're already collecting lots of data, what might need to happen so that, actually, we have evidence that could be useful for Welsh Government in strategic planning, other people managing landscapes, through to communities wanting to adapt and have plans for their places to manage risks et cetera? So, it feels like this is a resource that we could be doing so much more with, potentially, and what would need to happen for that?

So, I 100 per cent agree that often things are developed that can be added to and adapted to meet other requirements. I think the key would be that it would need to be added to and adapted to; so it would require resource to do that to turn it into a suitable product. The FSI, as a—. Sorry. The fire severity index—I'll slip into acronyms; I do apologise. The fire severity index, as well as being directly supplied and used by Natural England and Natural Resources Wales to support their remit, also forms an important, integral part of the wildfire guidance that is issued through the daily hazard assessment. So, the daily hazard assessment is a strategic product that gives a five-day outlook of nine hazards, actually, that affect the UK as a whole, and it's a UK-wide product; wildfires is just one of those products within that. Anyone within the Government or resilience communities can sign up, and many members of Welsh local authorities, resilience forums, fire services—naming off the top of his head e-mails he's aware it goes to—Welsh Government, the NHS in Wales as well, also receive it, as well as primary care organisations as well, that I'm aware of. So, it does feed through into this broader product.

I can explain a bit more about the daily hazard assessment perhaps, because that is also—. Well, that is not a public product. I would say the FSI is not intended to be a public product, but it's published on a public website. Currently, the daily hazard assessment is not a public product. It, again, was designed for the resilience communities to support their decision-making process, and I can explain that.

Right. Yes, okay. That's really interesting. Because we've been talking about things like how do we prevent people from starting fires in the first place, going into schools, that kind of education—. So, it feels like there's data that's being collected for different purposes, but there's potential that we could create ways of using it for, now, additional purposes, but there would need to be investment and it's definitely not what's there, but there's potential there.

There is potential there, and I think I can say that we have been in extensive conversations with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, MHCLG, in light of the Prime Minister's interest in wildfires, and preceding—our current Prime Minister—on whether or not we could make the daily hazard assessment publicly available and what would be involved. We currently have an aspiration to make it available for the next fire season.

Right. But not discussions in Wales currently, then.

Well, this would be for the UK. So, the daily hazard assessment is a UK product covering the entirety of the UK. And so, whilst it is MHCLG and responsibility is devolved, the conversations have been very clear that it would be about exposing the UK product for the UK, because the Met Office is also a UK organisation, we're not devolved, and we deliver the daily hazard assessment on behalf of the natural hazards partnership, which is also a UK-wide partnership that includes Natural Resources Wales and the Welsh Government.

Yes, and I guess things like—. If it was going to go on to DataMapWales, then that's where the relationship—. It's then about what Welsh Government almost does to it to bring it into the platforms that people are looking at.

Yes. The intention, or the aspiration—. Work still needs to happen and agreements still need to occur, but the aspiration would be to release it through an application programming interface, so a digital mechanism, and so that should be easily usable by the systems you've just mentioned, and would actually fit in with the methodologies that Wales has been very good, actually, at exemplifying with that platform, and things like JIGSO.

Thank you.

Just out of interest—. You mentioned the natural hazards partnership; I'm just interested, from your experience, in what sort of engagement the Welsh Government have had in the natural hazards partnership, and what feed-in they've had to it, especially given everything that's gone on in Wales in this last couple of months. Just how much involvement do they have in it, or does it tend to be led by UK Government departments? I'm just interested about their level of involvement in that, because also it feeds into the daily hazard assessment as well, doesn't it?

Yes, certainly. So, maybe a brief background. So, the natural hazards partnership was formed in 2011, with, currently, 22 organisations across the UK, and that does span Government departments, as you've mentioned, including devolved Governments. It spans Government agencies and arm's-length bodies like the Met Office, the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and also we have industry in the shape of Network Rail, and also the voluntary sector—British Red Cross play an important role. We also have the England and Wales wildfire forum as a formal member, which is another forum. So, lots of members and fire services are represented through that, including Welsh fire services.

The Welsh Government is formally represented and also Natural Resources Wales is formally represented from Wales on the natural hazards partnership, and they are active members. In fact, our last natural hazards meeting—we have them quarterly—our last one in September was here in Cardiff, in the Welsh Government building, and the focus of that meeting was the Welsh Valleys and the natural hazards particularly prevalent in the Welsh Valleys, with a particular focus on wildfires, and coal tips as something uniquely Welsh. We were very grateful, actually. They even organised a field trip for us to go out and look at a coal tip and get a better first-hand experience of that, in terms of bringing that awareness of that hazard to the rest of the UK, and what that means for Wales. So, I would say they're an active member, and have been for many years. I've only been chair for two and a half, three years, so preceding that, they were also part of it. They were part of the conversations that developed, actually, the current process that is used for the wildfire guidance that goes into the natural hazards. They were present at those meetings that happened.

Okay. John.

Just one quick question about the coal tips: how does that work? I mean, obviously, you're assessing the amount of water at any particular time that's falling on it, and if it hits a certain point—.

So, the natural hazards partnership doesn't offer a coal tip warning service or guidance service at the moment. We do include—. Within the daily hazard assessment, there is a landslip forecast. That is provided by the British Geological Survey, which is UK wide, but that is for natural slopes, not engineered slopes. So, in Wales you have an extensive system of monitoring and activity around your coal tips, and I would refer to them as the experts.

The purpose of focusing a light on that through the natural hazards partnership is to raise awareness of broader hazards and also to draw attention to, exactly as you said, the compound nature of a lot of these hazards. Heavy rainfall can result in damage just from the rainfall—flash flooding, fluvial flooding, groundwater flooding, potentially. But it can also result in landslides or coal tip slides, as well as other things. So, trying to join those together and not remain in our silos—'I'm a flooding expert' or 'I'm a coal tip expert'—. We need to break those down. A big part of what the natural hazards partnership tries to do is bring a more co-ordinated and therefore efficient approach to our hazard response.

I'm sure you'll be writing back to us when we look into coal tips later on in this Senedd term. Niamh, you wanted to come in.

Yes, I just want to go back to the whole bit on communication. Again, going back to your paper, under the section 'Communicating wildfire risk', you note that:

'Following lessons identified over the summer, we will update the process to notify the appropriate contact in Wales directly.'

Could you go into detail about what those lessons were that were identified over the summer when it came to communication, where you're at with the process of notifying the appropriate contact in Wales, and who is that appropriate contact as well?

Oh, okay—

Sorry.

I don't know who the appropriate contact is. In the Met Office, we have spread across the whole of the UK a group of staff called civil contingencies advisers. They provide a lot of our linkages into local government and devolved Government. Within Wales, our lead is Arwyn Harris, some of you may know, and he attends local resilience forum and other organisations. During the wildfire events in recent years, civil contingency advisers have joined every call the Welsh Government has held discussing the wildfires and provide updates and information on both wildfire guidance, which we're producing within the daily hazard assessment, but also on the prevailing weather conditions and those things that have relevance for that wildfire activity.

Some of the challenges identified were, I think, a failure to communicate directly with certain Welsh Government bodies. NRW was communicated with, but others were not, and so it was about establishing how we actually make sure that was just shared directly rather than through—

Sorry, can you give an example of who that communication—? You mentioned NRW was an example of doing it well. What other examples—? What didn't go so well?

So, when we were going, for example, I think, red with wildfires—I'd have to clarify this, I'm afraid—I'm certain that the wildfire communication went to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, who were then communicating with devolved Governments. We identified that as an unnecessary step, and one of the resolutions was that we would just communicate directly with all Governments, rather than doing that. MHCLG are the risk owner within the national security risk assessment, so there was logic to the original arrangement, but it was just an unnecessary step, and when people are busy, these unnecessary steps tend to be where you get break points. So, I don't think anyone meant to not communicate, but it just got lost in what was happening.

One thing I'm interested in is the Met Office's view on the long-term risks of wildfires, the long-term forecasting, for example, because if you listen to certain quarters, this is going to be the coolest summer that we've had on record for a long time—depending on who you listen to. I'm just interested, from the Met Office's perspective, what do you see as the future planning that needs to happen across the country? Obviously, you do future forecasting for Governments of all colours across the United Kingdom, so I'm just interested in your views on future weather patterns and what preparedness Governments need to take to be ready for future extreme weather events, particularly heat.

We definitely don't support that statement about this being the coolest summer we're likely to see for a long time. This summer has been exceptional in many ways, however, it is reflective of climate change. And so summers like this definitely are becoming more common and therefore more likely, but we will still have a lot of natural variability, so we can still get cool summers, wet summers, summers that we sometimes don't even spot as summers, and we could have worse summers than this. This was a notable summer for the number of heat waves and other events, but it didn't actually set a new record, for the UK at least—that was set in 2022, when we broke 40 degrees. So, there are variations in how you measure what an extreme summer is.

On climate change, going back to what we were talking about earlier, whilst we have to worry about ignition—and a lot of that is human driven, so I'll put that to one side for the moment—if ignition occurs, a fire will rage more aggressively in hotter conditions, drier conditions, both long-term drier conditions relating to the fuel load and whether that's dried out, but also short-term dry conditions about how humid it is on that day and at that time, and, dare I say, wind and how windy it is. With climate change, we are seeing hotter and potentially more intermittent rainfall, so longer periods of dryness, and that can lead to lower humidity. UK lower humidity is really important in terms of driving the ferocity of wildfires. A bit of dampness, as we all would suspect, suppresses the wildfire. Therefore, we could expect that the weather conditions that support wildfires are moving in the direction of supporting more and more aggressive wildfires, and also likely extending the season, because the summers are getting longer. So, we can see it extend.

We've already seen this to some extent. Historically, our wildfire season was often in the spring in the UK. A lot of more cool wildfires, easier to manage, when the dead material had just dried out and then that would burn off quickly. In the summer, plants were generally too moist to burn ferociously a lot of the time. We're now seeing the fresh-growth material dry out, and that's part of the reason that's driving the later wildfires in the summer. We can expect that to continue.

The fact that we're not touching on is, obviously, land management, the types of plants we have planted, human activity, some of which may change in direct response to climate change. Climate change may play a role in what we choose to plant and whether or not that might be chosen for its resilience to moisture, but whether or not that's chosen for its resilience to wildfires is another question that we would need to address. And then whether human behaviour alters in response to longer, drier conditions that leads, potentially, to more accidental or deliberate ignitions is another question, but that would be for the social and behavioural scientists.

I've got loads of questions, but if any other Members have got some—. Have you got one, Anna?

I've got one. I hope I'm not going off on a different tack now, but I note that you're feeding this evidence into the UK Climate Change Committee and feeding into plans for adaptation. We heard earlier that it seems that Welsh Government's adaptation planning hasn't got a huge resource. Do you feel confident that your evidence is being looked at now and there's active work to plan and adapt around it in Wales?

Yes, I do. I would say that definitely over the last few years the level of engagement has increased substantially, and the interactions between the Met Office and different parts of the Welsh Government has grown, and grown really positively, and everyone is keen to work together and, to pick up on the point earlier, to reuse the information that's being provided, but also to think what the limitations of that are. If we think of climate change, limitations often start—. We start by having to look at the whole world, and then we start to look down and down and down. The nature of the problem forces us to do that, really. As our capabilities improve, there's always another step we can do in terms of that localisation. And then increasingly, as well as the climate science—the physics, the biology, the chemistry that we bring to it—you have to interact with: what's the built environment, how does society operate? Then you get into those other aspects, and there's much more activity in that now, in how you look at things as a system. Again, getting into impacts and consequences and actions, rather than just looking at plus 2 degrees or plus 1.5 degrees and those sorts of things. That's really positive.

The 'State of Wildfires' report that people may be aware of—it's being produced each year now; the latest one will be released in the coming weeks—has a specific section on the UK. They have released material talking about consequences for the UK, and they specifically mention Wales, and what are the challenges for Welsh habitats.

Great, thank you.

Paul.

I was thinking about the wildfires we had this summer, and my gut feeling is that they probably did affect the weather in themselves. Certainly, we were driving along the M4 at one point, and it felt foggy, but it wasn't foggy, it was smoke. And so that, obviously, would have an impact on visibility, which is something that the Met Office app includes. So, how has that affected your work, and the way that you report on this? To what extent is it a circular thing?

Wildfires do affect the weather. The scale of the wildfire determines how much, so when we see really big wildfires like we do in Canada—they have really ferocious ones in Canada, Los Angeles and Australia—they can create considerable changes to the local weather, creating stronger winds, causing huge convective clouds to form, which in non-dry atmospheres might even result in rain, but they drive a lot of activity.

UK wildfires are much smaller and the effects are therefore much smaller as well in terms of changing the weather over a large area. You're right, smoke will affect visibility, that will affect how much sun gets to the ground and how much it heats the ground and there is—. So, our models do incorporate aerosols. An aerosol is a generic term for small particulates in the atmosphere, and they could be from smoke or your car exhaust, if you still drive a combustion engine, or gas boiler or anything like that, or industry—they go into the atmosphere. So, our weather prediction models do include a certain amount of that, those processes, and our climate models also include a certain amount of those sources.

There's a limit to the complexity we can include, for various reasons, and for the UK, there's a limit on what is beneficial and what would not be beneficial. It would be scientifically interesting, but it may not actually alter the forecast. So, we're in the business of forecasting, and whilst we look at things that are scientifically interesting, if it doesn't improve our forecast for the UK, we're unlikely to include it in our model, because there's a cost associated with that in terms of electricity.

Lovely. Thank you. I can't believe how quickly half an hour has gone. Niamh, you have the last question and I'll draw the session to a close now.

Diolch. Following on from what Paul said as well, I was interested to see about the daily air quality index. I was wondering if you could provide a Welsh context to that as well and what that index showed about how the air was polluted by the wildfires here in Wales.

The daily air quality index is the UK's official index guide to pollution developed under—. Well, DEFRA traditionally has had responsibility for air quality in the UK. So, it was originally developed under them through the department of health in COMEAP, the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution. So, the Met Office does produce the UK air quality forecast. Again, it is a UK air quality forecast that takes into account anthropogenic emissions, so the car industry et cetera. It also includes natural emissions and does include emissions from wildfires. We produce that, and it's presented using the daily air quality index as these levels behind the scenes. It's just calculating the concentrations of different pollutants from industry and naturally emitting pollutants. So, it includes emissions from Wales that are gathered and provided as part of the UK's national emissions inventory. And the satellite coverage data we use to gather wildfire information is actually global, so that also covers Wales.

What did the summer show for Wales?

Sorry?

What did it show for Wales in the summer, that data you were collecting, with all the wildfires?

The air quality forecast is quite low resolution, coarse-grained for want of a better word. It's not actually designed particularly to capture the detail of wildfires, I'm afraid. So, it doesn't actually show an awful lot for wildfires, generally speaking. This is another area that does need development.

I can't recall specific examples of where it showed elevated levels due to the wildfire smoke. I'd have to check that, though, and verify that with the team that does that. I think one of the things worth mentioning with wildfire smoke is, obviously, it may show an elevation remote from the wildfires. So, some of the smoke from the south Wales fires was seen across Bristol.

So, there's the model, but then there's also having the observing network and being able to actually detect it. The air quality observing network does have holes, does have gaps, doesn't have uniform geographical coverage across the UK or any of the nations.

Thank you very much. That brings our session to a close. Thank you very much for your time today. A Record of Proceedings will be sent to you to check for accuracy. On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for coming in today. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much for having me.

We now move on, Members, to item No. 5, which is papers to note. They've been circulated to you. Is everybody content with the papers? I see all Members are content.

Before I go on to item 6, it is our committee clerk Manon's last day with us. She isn't here, she probably didn't know I was going to do this, but it's on the public record, just to thank Manon for all her work setting up the committee and helping me as Chair and, I'm sure, other Members, in getting settled in. I'd like to welcome Rachael to the committee as well, who'll be taking us forward, going into the rest of the term.

So, moving on to item No. 6, which is a motion under Standing Order 17.42(ix) to resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting, are Members content? Members are content, so we will continue in private. Good day.