DORSET Council could still be talking about a possible disposable bbq ban by the winter.

Calls were made at this week’s cabinet meeting to speed up the 12- week consultation period, review, and then possible change in local laws.

Chair of the Wiltshire and Dorset fire authority, former shadow Dorset Council leader, Cllr Rebecca Knox, said she would support anything to speed up the process. She said the current timetable would mean the council still talking about possible measures to take in October.

The idea of controls has been put forward after claims that the 220-hectare Wareham Forest fire, which put almost two weeks to stop, was started by portable barbecues.

At Tuesday’s Dorset Council cabinet meeting councillors were told of 30 portable barbecues abandoned on Studland beach in just one evening needing to be extinquished by the fire service; of others found elsewhere, still smouldering, on heathland and on Durdle Door beach, and of numerous examples of portable bbq’s being thrown into public litter bins, setting them on fire.

Cllr Knox said that there were also reported cases of the portable fires being buried under sand, but still alight sometime later, and of children being injured on their sharp edges as they dug sandcastles.

Climate change chair Cllr Ray Bryan said the Wareham fire would take years for wildlife and plants to recover and, apart from the risk to life, had also damaged the environment with smoke pollution.

He said he would do all he could to speed up the process towards making Dorset a disposable bbq-free zone.

Cllr Knox said that it would take national legislation to ban the sale of the bbqs although she hoped retailers and local people would be ‘nudged’ to take their own action.

Online meeting pics of Cllr Ray Bryan and Cllr Rebecca Knox