Fire Statistics England 2014/15 is the first fire statistics publication released since responsibility for fire policy moved from the Department for Communities and Local Government to the Home Office on April 1st 2016.

This release provides greater detail on incidents attended in 2014/15, including the causes of fires, the use of smoke alarms, the seasonality and temporality of fires and other topics of interest to the fire statistics community.

Key Facts

• There were roughly 496,000 incidents attended by fire and rescue services in 2014/15. The number of incidents has been on a downward trend since the peak of about 1,016,000 incidents attended in 2003/04. Of these incidents around 155,000 (31 per cent) were fire incidents and roughly 31,300 (six per cent) were dwelling fire incidents.
• 41 per cent of all fatalities in fires in England were 65 years old and over in 2014/15, compared to 23 per cent of all casualties. For every million people in England, there were 4.8 fire related fatalities in 2014/15. This fatality rate increased to 7.9 people for those 65 to 79 years old and 17.8 for those 80 years and over.
• Fires where a smoke alarm was not present accounted for 30 per cent of all dwelling fires and 35 per cent of all dwelling fire fatalities in 2014/15. This is in the context of 12 per cent of dwellings not having a working smoke alarm in 2013/14 (the latest year for which data are available).
• 46 per cent of all fires in 2014/15 in England took place between 16:00 and 22:00. These six hours were the six individual hours where the highest proportion of fires took place. The peak was between 19:00 and 20:00 with nine percent of fires in this single hour.
• In contrast to the number of fires, the number of fatalities is more stable across the day. However a quarter (25%) of fatalities occur between 00:00 and 06:00 despite only 13 per cent of fires occurring over the same six hours.
• Smokers’ materials (such as cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco) caused 36 per cent of fatalities in accidental dwelling fires in 2014/15, and was by far the largest ignition category. In contrast only six per cent of accidental dwelling fires were caused by smokers’ materials in 2014/15.
• Cooking appliances caused 50 per cent of accidental dwelling fires in 2014/15, and was by far the largest ignition category. In contrast, only six per cent of accidental dwelling fire fatalities were caused by cooking appliances in 2014/15.