Communities and Local Government

• Fire and resilience
• About fire and resilience
• Community fire safety

Fire and resilience

Community fire safety

Every year there are approximately 37,000 accidental house fires in England resulting in around 220 deaths and 7,500 people injured.

Communities and Local Government aims to reduce the level of damage, injury and death caused by fires by working closely with the fire and rescue service and supporting its ongoing modernisation. We are providing a lead to drive the continuing improvement of the service in taking on a wider role, focusing more on fire prevention and protecting the public from a range of risks, like road accidents, floods and other civil emergencies.

Fire Kills

We support the key national safety campaign Fire Kills. Its aim is to develop a long-term national fire safety strategy based on three main themes. They are:

• prevention
• detection
• escape

Fire Kills is currently running an advertising campaign stressing the dangers of toxic smoke.  More information can be found at: www.direct.gov.uk/firekills (external link).

Fire Kills has already run a number of advertising campaigns such as:

• Pull Your Finger Out - asking people to test their smoke alarm now. This highlighted the devastating and potentially fatal consequences of not testing your alarm often enough. The sad fact is that one in three smoke alarms fails to operate in the event of a fire.
• Push the button - reminding people to check their smoke alarm batteries as part of their regular household routines. This follows research which showed more homes have smoke alarms, but many have failed to operate during fires because the battery was flat.
• Put it Out, Right Out - promoting fire safety messages related to smoking. This campaign reduced smoking-related fire deaths by a fifth in 2004.

The campaign plans to focus more on smoking-related fire deaths as this is the most common cause of fatal casualties in accidental dwelling fires. The smoking ban in pubs and clubs that was introduced in spring 2007 has given added emphasis.  As over 50 per cent of those who die in accidental household fires are over 65, there will also be a push in the activity targeting the older generations.

There will also be a drive to reach certain groups which are at risk due to things like hearing disabilities, language barriers or cultural practices like cooking methods or using candles for festivities.