Disposable barbecues have been banned from sale across Great Britain, a day after Swansea Council urged people to leave them at home.
The UK government issued the temporary ban on Friday, with advice published online saying the product poses a “significant risk to the public” during the current drought and heatwave.
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade said disposable barbecues had caused “a number of serious wildfires across the country over the summer months”, adding they “cannot be considered a safe product” in the current conditions and “must not be made available for sale either in store or online”.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said: “Britain is a tinderbox right now.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, the Prime Minister said 37 fires were burning across England and Wales, four of them major incidents.
He said they were not all linked to disposable barbecues, but that “it’s probable that some of them have been caused in that way”.
“We’re going into a difficult weekend, please just think about the situation that we’re in,” he said. “Setting a fire in any outdoor setting of any kind is a risk to other people’s homes, it’s a risk to other people’s lives, don’t do it, please don’t do it.”
All retailers will receive guidance about the change, which the government said would be kept under review.
The ban goes further than the Welsh Government said it could: only on Thursday, First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth backed a voluntary halt while conceding “it’s not something we’re able to do in terms of introducing a ban”.
The First Minister had echoed the Prime Minister’s call for retailers to suspend sales, after the issue was discussed at an emergency Cobra meeting on Wednesday which both attended.
It also lands a day after Cllr Andrew Stevens, Swansea Council’s cabinet member for environment and infrastructure, urged people not to use the barbecues in the city’s parks and open spaces, saying fields and farmland across Swansea and Gower are extremely dry.
A number of large retailers and supermarkets had already stopped selling the barbecues voluntarily under a framework agreed in 2023 between fire chiefs and the British Retail Consortium.
The whole of Wales has been in drought since the end of July, after the country received just 8% of its average July rainfall in the driest July for 190 years.
Swansea has seen the fire risk at close range, with flames breaking out on Kilvey Hill above St Thomas homes last month, the third fire on the hillside in fifteen months.
The ban covers every shop in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire, in store and online, for as long as it remains in force. Anyone who spots a wildfire should move to a safe location and call 999.
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