The changing climate means we deal with a range of incidents resulting from more severe weather events which are becoming more common. The two main types are water and flooding from extreme rainfall and wildfires from hotter and drier periods. Both incident types are highlighted by the government in the National Risk Register and require a different type of response from us.

Serious flooding has affected North Yorkshire for many years. What used to be seen as a rare event – happening once every 100 years – is now likely to happen more often, around once every 10 years (North Yorkshire Council, 2023). These floods can take a lot of time, people, and equipment to deal with, especially because they often cover large areas.
The warming climate also creates extreme downpours leading to localised flooding more common as can be seen from recent incidents both nationally and locally. Localised flash flooding, such as the events that have occurred in Reeth and Knaresborough in recent years, are likely to become more common as warmer air holds more moisture and is difficult to predict – which makes it harder to prepare for.

Following our previous Community Risk Management Plan, we have increased our specialist water rescue provision, and this decision was supported by recent modelling by ORH.

We work closely with our partners in the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum to plan for and carry out training exercises for major flooding events. Flooding continues to be
one of the highest-rated risks on the North Yorkshire Community Risk Register (NYLRF, 2025).

We are increasing our provision of wildfire teams who have specialist vehicles, equipment and training. Large numbers of visitors to our coast during warm weather increases the number of incidents we attend in those areas. During dry weather, more people visit the national parks, which increases the risk of fires starting on the moorland. These incidents
can be very resource intensive to extinguish and can lead to lasting damage to the landscape and biodiversity.

The extreme heat of July 2022 led to multiple incidents of fires in the open, many of them on valuable agricultural land, which destroyed farmers’ crops. As highlighted through the UK government’s National Risk Register (HMG Cabinet Office, 2025) the changing climate means that instances of extreme heat such as that experienced in July 2022 are more likely.

North Yorkshire contains 27% of England’s blanket bog. Blanket bogs accumulate carbon at a rate of 11.77 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare per year (Yorkshire Peat Partnership, 2009). The vegetation in a blanket bog slows the flow of rainfall which helps to prevent flooding in our towns and villages. Moorland fires can severely damage the ability of bogs to both slow rainfall and accumulate carbon. They also cause damage to rare wildlife habitats and can take a long time to recover from. We work with farmers
and other landowners to increase awareness of the risk and what measures can be undertaken to reduce it. We also liaise with local authorities to monitor ‘the urban/rural
interface’, where fires in the open can encroach on people’s houses, as was seen in London in 2022. This risk is present in areas of North Yorkshire.