Recently released Home Office figures reveal that the quantity of fires across England attended to by the Fire and Rescue Services, has risen by 9% during the last 12 months, with the number of actual incidents showing an increase of 2%
In the wake of the reported rise, the national Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has requested once more that the Government makes sure that fire services are fully outfitted and resourced. This call for aid is an attempt to reduce these newly-found figures in future years.
NFCC Chair, Roy Wilsher stated:
“Recent independent inspections by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate raised concerns about whether fire and rescue services have enough resource and highlighted areas such as protection work, which has reduced drastically in recent years.”
The latest Home Office statistics for fire and rescue incidents spans the term from April 2018 up to March 2019. The rise in fires across England is largely on account of a 19% hike in the number of secondary fires, a number of which have been linked to the uncommonly high temperatures recorded last year.
An overview of all fires attended to, showed that 32% of incidents were fires, 40% were false alarms and 28% accounted for were non-fire-related incidents.
While fire services are trained to answer these incidents, the responsibility of prevention falls to all. Smoke detection systems and alarms should always be fitted in both business premises and residential properties. Regular equipment checks should be conducted and scheduled servicing properly maintained.
