Armstrong: Farm fire costs rose four times faster here than across the UK

Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader and Agriculture Spokesperson Diana Armstrong MLA has called for investment in rural fire and rescue services, after NFU Mutual’s Farm Fires Report showed the cost of farm fires in Northern Ireland rose 73% in 2025 to an estimated £11.8 million, against a UK-wide rise of 18%.

Diana Armstrong said:

“Fire has always been part of the risk of farming. What is not normal is the cost here rising by nearly three quarters in a single year, four times faster than across the United Kingdom as a whole.

“Anyone who has been near a farm fire knows what it means. A shed goes up in the middle of the night and by morning a family has lost machinery it spent twenty years paying for, or stock it bred, or the winter’s feed. It takes minutes. Putting it back takes years, and some never do.

“Behind that £11.8 million are farming families already under real pressure, and a serious fire on top of everything else can finish a business.

“Last year’s heat is a large part of why these figures jumped, and we are told to expect more summers like it. That is not a reason to shrug. It is a reason to be ready.

“Farmers will do what they can. Keep the machinery and the electrics checked, think about the yard, consider fire suppression systems where they are worth having. But prevention cannot fall to farmers alone, and nobody seriously argues that it should.

“The part nobody wants to talk about is how long it takes a fire crew to reach a farm up a lane, and what they find when they get there. Rural fire and rescue needs proper investment, decent equipment and better access to water supplies in an emergency. Anyone living in a rural townland will understand exactly why.

“I will be asking what assessment has been made of rural fire service response times and of water access for firefighting in rural areas, because a farm fire is lost or saved in the first half hour.

“£11.8 million is not a statistic. It is sheds, herds, machinery and livelihoods, and one of the steepest rises anywhere in the United Kingdom.”