The Home Office has released its latest fire and rescue incident statistics, for the year ending March 2020, with some of the key results summarised here.
The report covers statistics about incidents attended by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in England for 2019/20 (or the year ending March 2020). The statistics are sourced from the Home Office’s online Incident Recording System (IRS) and include statistics on all incidents, fire-related fatalities and casualties from fires, with long term comparisons.
Key results
- FRSs attended 557,299 incidents in 2019/20. This was a 3% decrease compared with the previous year (576,391). Of these incidents, there were 153,957 fires. This was a 16% decrease compared with the previous year (182,915) with falls in all types of fires but 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 fatalities in 2019/20 (the lowest number of fire-related fatalities in the annual series) compared with 253 in the previous year
- Of all incidents attended by FRSs, fires accounted for 28%, fire false alarms 42% and non-fire incidents 31%. This compares with fires accounting for 35%, fire false alarms 42% and non-fire incidents 23% 10 years ago
- Fire and rescue services attended 775 fires in purpose-built high-rise (defined as 10+ storeys) flats, which was a 6% decrease compared with the previous year (821)
Incidents that FRSs attend are categorised into three main types – fires attended, non-fire incidents and fire false alarms.
This news story is in partnership with Barbour EHS, a specialist information service provider supporting professionals across sectors including fire and security, FM, health and safety, sustainability and energy.