Housing: Fires

(asked on 8th December 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the annual number of domestic fires in England caused by (a) electrical misuse and (b) domestic electrical distribution faults.


Answered by
Penny Mordaunt Portrait
Penny Mordaunt
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
This question was answered on 16th December 2014

The Incident Recording System records information about every incident attended by Fire and Rescue Services.

There were 28,034 accidental dwelling fires attended by Fire and Rescue Services in England during 2013/14.

In 7,254 cases, the power source involved in the ignition was reported to have been electricity and the main cause deemed to have been misuse of electrical equipment or appliance. Of these, 1,387 were through negligent use of electrical equipment or appliances, and the remaining 5,867 related to cooking using electrical appliances (excluding chip pans and deep fat fryers).

In 2,482 cases, the cause of ignition was reported to have been electricity supply, involving wiring, cabling or plugs.

Note that 2013/14 figures are provisional, and are likely to be slight undercounts as one Service was unable to supply a complete set of records.

The Department’s Fire Kills campaign promotes electrical fire safety messages to all households in close partnership with Electrical Safety First. The key mechanism for promoting these messages is Electrical Fire Safety Week, which ran from 10 to 16 November.

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