Accredited official statistics

Fire statistics: UK 2008

The annual publication of fire statistics for the UK for 2008.

Documents

Fire statistics, United Kingdom 2008

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Fire statistics, United Kingdom 2008: errata

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Fire statistics UK: headline figures for 2008, UK and England

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Fire statistics UK: latest headline figures for England

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Fire statistics UK 2008: time series, tables 1a - 16

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Fire statistics UK 2008: annual data, tables 17a - 24

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Fire statistics UK 2008: long time series, tables 25 - 28

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Fire statistics UK 2008: county and regional data, tables 29 - 31

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Pre-release access list: fire statistics, United Kingdom

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Details

The 2008 national statistics and analysis in detail on fires, casualties and false alarms attended by fire and rescue services in the United Kingdom were released on Friday 26 November 2010 under the auspices of the UK Statistics Authority.

The main points in the publication are:

  • the majority of fire-related deaths occur in dwelling fires (3/4 in 2008); the highest fire fatality rates were for people aged 80 or over, and for males, and in Scotland
  • smoke alarms were absent from the fire area in 38% of dwelling fires (18,600 fires); of the total of 353 dwelling fires fatalities in the UK in 2008, 130 (37%) were in fires where there was no smoke alarm present, and a further 100 (28%) where a smoke alarm was present but did not operate
  • the proportion of households with a working smoke alarm increased rapidly from 8% in 1988 to 70% in 1994, and has continued to rise in recent years to 91% in 2008
  • more than half (54%) of accidental fires in homes arose from cooking; other common sources of ignition were electrical appliances (13%), smokers’ materials (7%), electrical distribution (7%) and space heating appliances (4%)

Errata

An errata was published on 19 January 2011. It presents revisions made to data published in ‘Fire statistics: UK 2008’.

Updates to this page

Published 26 November 2010

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