Five things I learned from the latest Home Office fire statistics

The Home Office published an analysis of incidents attended by fire and rescue services in England up to March, and when it comes to incidents that aren’t about dealing with a fire, there are some interesting results.

Here are five things I learned about non-fire incidents:

1. Non-fire incidents are the highest they’ve been since the year 2000 and account for a third of all incidents. Today, the figure has jumped to 207k, a 58% increase. Ten years ago, fire and rescue services responded to 113k incidents that didn’t involve a fire.
2. The biggest chunk of those incidents involves getting people in or out of buildings and this usually means working with other agencies. The Home Office statistics uses the term ‘collaborating incidents’ to also include helping other agencies and responding to suicide (including attempts). In the last decade, collaborating incidents have gone up over 200% going from 20k to over 67k during this period.
3. The number of people dying in non-fire incidents over the same ten year period has increased, up 177%. In the last year, 4,487 died compared with 1,618 in 2014. The rate per 1.000 people nearly doubled to 22.7 during the last decade.
4. Flooding response is also up but on a fairly steady rise year on year and for the last 12 months stood at around 17k.
5. Fire and rescue services have been called to remove objects from people nearly 7,000 times in the last year. Even during Covid, the number didn’t drop that much, with services responding to just over 5,300 incidents.

Find out more by visiting the Detailed analysis of non-fire incidents : England, April 2023/2024.

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