The government has issued a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues as they pose a “significant risk to the public” during the current drought and heatwave conditions, according to advice published online.

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade said the product has been the cause of “a number of serious wildfires across the country over the summer months”.

It added disposable barbecues “cannot be considered a safe product” in the current conditions and they “must not be made available for sale either in store or online at the current time” in Great Britain.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham advised people to take care, telling the BBC: “Britain is a tinderbox right now.”

Burnham said all retailers will be receiving guidance about the change, which will be kept under review.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Matt Chorley, the prime minister said: “We’ve got 37 fires across England and Wales right now, four of them are major incidents.”

Burnham said they were not all linked to disposable barbecues but “it’s probable that some of them have been caused in that way”.

He added: “We’re going into a difficult weekend, please just think about the situation that we’re in.

“Britain is a tinderbox right now. 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.”

The prospect of a temporary ban was discussed at an emergency Cobra meeting on Wednesday.

A number of large retailers and supermarkets had already voluntarily stopped selling the devices under a framework, agreed in 2023 between fire chiefs and the British Retail Consortium.

This said that retailers should suspend sales once an extreme heat event has been declared as imminent, or in response to “reasonable, evidence based” requests from local councils.