A major wildfire continues to burn on Conwy Mountain in North Wales after breaking out near Sychnant Pass on July 12, forcing evacuations in Capelulo and prompting school closures as firefighters battle challenging conditions. It is one of at least 19 wildfires burning across England and Wales, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council, while Natural England has warned that parts of southern England and the Midlands face an "exceptional" fire risk this week.
The latest outbreaks bring fresh relevance to warnings raised by experts from Willis following the recent Spanish wildfires. Speaking to Insurance Business UK, they said the UK remains under-assessed for wildfire risk, even though the conditions driving fires here differ significantly from those seen in Spain. Gaps in modelling, risk mapping and understanding of the wider economic impacts, they argue, are leaving businesses and insurers exposed as extreme weather becomes more frequent.
Daniel Bannister, weather and climate risks research lead at the Willis Research Network, said the issue extends well beyond any one region. "I'd say the whole of the UK is under-assessed, because historically we've not really been a fire-prone country, so we don't have the data, we don't have the models really available to us to look at wildfire risk in the UK compared to places like Spain or even California," he said.
He added that risk also varies sharply by landscape, from remote moorland and peatland such as the Pennines and Conwy Mountain, to the rural-urban interface seen at Wennington in east London, where around 20 homes were destroyed during the 2022 heatwave.
Flood has long been recognised as a widespread and highly impactful peril in the UK, said Claire Wilkinson, managing director of alternative risk transfer solutions. Wildfire, by contrast, has generally been treated as too infrequent to demand the same attention, meaning the UK has no equivalent national wildfire risk map.
David Williams, senior director of alternative risk transfer solutions, said much of the underlying data needed to build one already exists. Vegetation and weather data are well understood, he said, but reliable ignition data is not, and behaviour plays a large part in that gap.
"Where fire risk is bad, like Australia and California, people have been told about this risk for a very long time, and their behaviour changes during bad weather days to try to stop ignitions happening," he said. "Whereas what we do is have a barbecue out on the moors."
The National Fire Chiefs Council has issued similar advice this week, urging the public to avoid disposable barbecues near current wildfire areas.
That gap in risk assessment sits alongside a separate question of how wildfire is actually priced. Unlike California or Australia, where wildfire cover can be excluded from property policies in high-risk areas, UK insurers generally fold it into standard fire cover.
Wilkinson said crop and forestry insurance are exceptions, where coverage can be limited to specific perils such as fire, frost, hail or wind. It is also the case that all insurance policies need to have a buyer, so an entity with insurable interest willing to pay a premium to insure the asset. Such an entity may not exist for open moorland and peatland.
She argued that peril specific exclusions can, and arguably should, influence planning decisions. "If we want to discourage development in floodplains and wildfire exposed areas, exclusions can be a useful deterrent. “You can't expect insurers to keep paying claims when people just keep rebuilding in high-risk areas.”
Williams pointed to fires on the North York Moors as an early indication of the business interruption risks wildfire can create in the UK.
"Business owners were talking about how persistent smoke from the ongoing smouldering was affecting people going to their area and their businesses," he said.
Communities around Conwy may now face similar challenges, with residents advised to keep windows closed and seek medical advice if they experience breathing difficulties. The effects can also persist long after the flames have been extinguished. Regrowth after a wildfire can take five to ten years, Williams said, leaving businesses that depend on the natural landscape facing a prolonged recovery.
"If a large part of your business model is the natural beauty of the UK and then it gets burned down, that's a huge problem."
Wilkinson said Willis has already placed revenue-protection products linked to red weather warnings and prolonged dry conditions for tourism clients in the UK and internationally, but that UK clients have yet to raise wildfire specifically. "We've just not had the conversation yet," she said. "But given the potential negative impact of wildfires on tourism, we probably should be talking to clients in this sector and suggesting parametric insurance as a potential mechanism for mitigating the financial impact of such an event.”
Williams cited Canada's 2024 Jasper wildfire as an example of the gap between insured losses and the wider economic impact of wildfire. While insured losses reached around US$1.3 billion, he said the full hit to tourism and the local economy "may not be fully realised yet."
Asked whether the UK and Spain should increasingly be viewed as a correlated underwriting risk, Bannister said the two events had markedly different causes. Spain experienced what he called "hydroclimatic whiplash" – a wet, mild spring that drove heavy vegetation growth, followed by summer drying that turned it into tinder. The UK's fires followed a different path: a humid June kept grass and vegetation green, before a hot, dry spell stripped out that moisture rapidly and left the ground primed to burn.
Wilkinson said grouping countries together risked oversimplifying wildfire exposure, "The risk depends on so many factors – fuel, weather, ignition but also forest management, early detection and the availability of fire services to limit the spread.”
While the drivers differ, both argued that wildfire can no longer be viewed solely as a problem for traditionally fire-prone regions. Recent events in Spain and the UK suggest insurers may increasingly need to assess the peril in markets where it has historically received far less attention.
