Communities and Local Government

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• Statistical Release

Fire Statistics, United Kingdom 2006

The latest National Statistics on fires, casualties and false alarms attended by the Fire and Rescue Services in the United Kingdom were released by Communities and Local Government on Friday 30 May 2008 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

Statistics in this release cover a range of issues concerning fire incidents in the United Kingdom including fires, casualties and false alarms attended by the Fire and Rescue Services in the United Kingdom from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2006.

The key points are:

• The total number of fires needing the attendance of the fire and rescue service decreased by 1 per cent to 426,200 in 2006 from 430,300 in 2005.
• The number of fire related deaths in the UK remained at 491 in 2006 the lowest since 1959.
• There were 159,800 primary fires in the UK in 2006, down 6 per cent on the 2005 total of 169,300 making it the lowest number since 1983.
• Within this, dwelling fires are at their lowest since 1978 now standing at 55,800.
• There were 295 fatal casualties in accidental dwelling fires (5 per cent less than in 2005) and non-fatal casualties fell to 9,300 (4 per cent less than 2005).
• Attendances at false alarms decreased by less than 1 per cent to 435,900 continuing the trend since 2001. Within this there was a 14 per cent fall (to 33,700) in malicious false alarms and a slight decrease (to 283,500) in false alarms due to apparatus.

The latest annual bulletin is available at: Fire Statistics, United Kingdom 2006.