Official Statistics
Fire and rescue authorities: operational statistics bulletin for England 2009 to 2010
Annual statistics about fire and rescue authorities’ staff, numbers of injuries to firefighters, fire safety audits of buildings and community fire safety.
Applies to England
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The latest fire and rescue operational statistics for England for 2009 to 2010 were released under the auspices of the UK Statistics Authority on Friday 24 September 2010.
Main points from the release are:
- there were 51,653 full-time equivalent fire and rescue staff in England on 31 March 2010, 2.6% higher than in 2005
- there has been a gradual increase in the representation of women and minority ethnic staff over recent years: at 31 March 2010, 3.9% of firefighters were women compared with 2.5% in 2005; minority ethnic staff accounted for 3.7% of all staff (uniformed and support staff combined) compared with 2.8% in 2005
- there were 3,840 injuries to fire and rescue personnel in 2009 to 2010, 47% lower than in 1999 to 2000
- sickness absence levels have reduced considerably in the last few years, with an average of 6.3 shifts/days lost per person by wholetime firefighters and 9.6 shifts/days by fire control staff in 2009 to 2010, compared to 10.0 and 11.4 respectively in 2004 to 2005
- ill-health retirements in the fire and rescue service in 2009 to 2010 remained much lower than just a few years ago; in 2009 to 2010, there were 1.3 ill-health retirements per 1,000 employees compared to nearly 8 per 1,000 employees in 2004 to 2005
- fire and Rescue Services carried out 77,500 audits of buildings in 2009 to 2010; almost 90% of follow-up actions were informal notifications
Updates to this page
Published 24 September 2010