A spike in deliberate rubbish and grass fires occurred as the fire service was caught off guard by last year’s long, hot summer.

Avon Fire Authority has admitted it was unprepared for the extreme temperatures in July and August 2018, which saw more deliberate “secondary” fires than usual.

Secondary fires include rubbish and grass fires and other fires that do not involve buildings or vehicles that are fit for use.

In the last nine months of 2018, 953 deliberate secondary fires were recorded across the Avon Fire and Rescue area.

A report prepared by the chief fire officer for the Avon Fire Authority highlights: “The high number of deliberate secondary fires (excluding vehicles) recorded in July and to a lesser extent August.

“It is likely that this is due to the extreme weather experienced.”

Presenting the report to the authority’s performance review and scrutiny committee on February 15, an officer said: “The issue we had was the long hot summer.

“It’s the first time we’ve had one of those for a few years and I think, if anything, we weren’t as prepared as we possibly should have been, but we will be prepared for next year if it happens again.”

The officer said an “action plan” had been devised to deal with the next hot summer based on an analysis of the locations, times and causes of last summer’s arsons.

“We’ve got a toolkit together of things that we can do,” he said.

The interventions range from officer patrols in areas known as arson hotspots to putting up barriers to prevent cars being driven into areas where they can then be set alight.

“So it’s things like rubbish clearance, arson drive routes, certainly liaising with neighbourhood watch and with beat managers to try and identify where problems have happened before and try and prevent those problems from happening again.”

Assistant chief fire officer Rob Davis added the fire service also received information about weather-related risks based on long-range forecasts from the Met Office.