Latest fire statistics released

The Home Office released the latest fire and rescue incident statistics for the year ending March 2020¹, which revealed the ‘lowest number of fatalities in [the] annual series’.

SHP Online reported on the release of the statistics, which cover incidents attended by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in England, and which are sourced from the Home Office’s online incident recording system. The data includes all incidents, fire related deaths and casualties, as well as ‘long term comparisons’.

The key results included:

• FRSs attended 557,299 incidents in 2019/20, a 3% fall compared to the previous year’s 576,391 incidents – and of these, 153,957 were fires, a 16% decrease compared to 2018/19’s 182,915 fires. There were falls seen in ‘all types of fires’, with this ‘particularly driven’ by a 23% fall in secondary fires ‘now that the hot, dry 2018 summer is in the comparator year’.
• There were 243 fire related deaths in 2019/20, which was the ‘lowest number of fire-related fatalities in the annual series’, and which had fallen from 253 in 2018/19.
• Of all the incidents that FRSs attended, fires accounted for 28%, fire false alarms 42%, and non-fire incidents 31%, with the respective results from 10 years ago of 35%, 42% and 23%.
• FRSs attended 775 fires in purpose built high rise flats (ten or more storeys high) which was a 6% decrease compared to 2018/19’s 821.

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1.https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/908635/fire-and-rescue-incident-mar20-hosb2220.pdf