Fires
(asked on 28th November 2016) - View Source
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many fatal fires have there been in each fire authority area in England this year to date; and how this compares with the previous 10 years.
Answered by
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
Figures are collected from Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) using the electronic Incident Recording System (IRS). Comparable figures are only available since 2009/10, when the IRS was introduced.
The attached table shows there were 268 fatal fires in England in the financial year 2015/16, compared to 310 in 2009/10.
Though subject to fluctuation due to the relatively small numbers, fire-related fatalities and fatal fires have been on a broadly long-term downward trend. For similar reasons figures for individual FRSs figures should be treated with care and changes are not reflective of trends. The published figures on fatalities can be found in Table 0502 on the Gov.UK website under statistical data sets for fire statistics.