Accredited official statistics
Fire statistics monitor: April to September 2011
Statistics on fires, casualties, false alarms and non-fire incidents attended by fire and rescue services in England.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
The latest national statistics on fires, casualties, false alarms and non-fire incidents attended by the fire and rescue services in England, produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government, were released on Tuesday 31 January 2012 under the auspices of the UK Statistics Authority.
Statistics in this release focus on 1 April to 30 September 2011. The main points of the data are summarised below.
Fatal and non-fatal casualties
- between April and September 2011 there were 149 fire fatalities; 2 fewer than in April to September 2010
- accidental dwelling fires fatalities, which account for three fifths of all fire fatalities, were down by four from 91 in April to September 2010 to 87 in April to September 2011
- there were 2,120 non-fatal fire casualties (excluding first aid cases). This was 2% higher than in April 2010 to September 2010
Incidents
- in England, fire and rescue services attended 322,000 fire and false alarm incidents in April to September 2011, 7% lower than in April 2010 to September 2010
- total fires fell by 4% to 131,000
- dwelling fires fell by 2% to 17,000, and fires in other buildings were down by 2% to 11,000; road vehicle fires fell by 13% to 13,000
- attendances at false alarms decreased by 10% to 129,000; 2/3 of these related to automatic apparatus, while 4% were malicious false alarms
- fire and rescue services attended 62,500 non-fire incidents in April 2011 to September 2011, down 6% from April 2010 to September 2010; the most common categories of non-fire incidents were: road traffic collisions (23%), effecting entry (13%) and lift releases (12%)
Deliberate fires
- there were 71,000 deliberate fires in April to September 2011, 4% lower than in April to September 2010
- the publication includes analysis of the number of deliberate fires in areas affected by the disorder in August 2011; by comparing to typical numbers of deliberate fires in preceding weeks, this shows that there were several hundred more attendances at deliberate fires recorded in total across the period of disorder in those areas