Fire prevention and protection statistics, England, year ending March 2023

Product Description

This release contains statistics from administrative sources about prevention and protection activities carried out by fire and rescue services (FRSs), and their partners, in England for the year ending March 2024. This release also analyses smoke alarm ownership statistics in England for the year ending March 2023 published by the English Housing Survey (EHS). This release compares the year ending March 2024 with the years ending March 2023 and 2019.

Fire prevention refers to FRSs statutory duty to undertake fire prevention activities, as set out in section 6 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act in 2004. Typical prevention activities provide information to households to encourage fire safety behaviours and include: home fire safety visits (HFSVs; previously known as home fire safety checks), arson prevention, educational work with young people and other vulnerable groups, as well as other fire prevention campaigns and initiatives.

Fire protection refers to FRSs statutory duty to promote and enforce fire safety to reduce risk to people in the built environment. The Home Office collects data on fire safety enforcement activities primarily, but not exclusively, in respect of the provisions of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO, also referred to as the RRO). The FSO is the primary fire safety regime in England and Wales, and it applies to all non-domestic premises, as well as the common parts of multi-occupancy residential buildings. It places a number of legal duties on responsible persons (persons in control of a premises), including the requirements to:

• carry out fire risk assessments to identify any general fire safety precautions
• implement and maintain fire safety precautions to protect the safety of people in or within the vicinity of the premises