Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what information her Department holds on the number of battery fires there have been relating to electric (a) cars, (b) bikes and (c) scooters since 2022.

The Home Office collects data on incidents attended by Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs), with this data including the cause of the fire and the source of ignition. This data is published in a variety of publications, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fire-statistics.

Data collected through the Incident Recording System (IRS) does not include data on whether fire incidents attended were caused by or involved batteries, for electric cars, electric bikes or electric scooters.

We are in the process of replacing the IRS, and intend to update the data it collects, covering both the questions and answer categories included within the forms. Adding new categories, including lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles, e-scooters and e-bikes, to the data collection are options beings developed to reform the IRS with a modern, secure, and flexible system.