There were 309 fire-related fatalities in Great Britain in the 2023/24 reporting year, a decline on the previous reporting year when there were 323. In the early 2000s, the annual number of fire fatalities was consistently over 500, with numbers gradually falling throughout that decade. In 2011/12 the number of fatalities related to fire fell below 400 for the first time, and has remained below 400 since that point. Incidents rise as workforce shrinks Although there has been a net decrease in the number of incidents attended by fire and rescue services since the early 2010s, the current trend from 2014/15 onwards has been one of increase. In 2022/23, there were 759,456 incidents attended by the fire service, which was the most in a reporting year since 2010/11. Like many other public services, the fire service cut significant numbers of staff during the 2010s, with the number of fire and rescue workers in England falling by around 10,000 between 2008 and 2018. In a similar time period, expenditure on fire-protection services in the UK was cut from 3.11 billion in 2009/10, to just 2.72 billion in 2018/19. Workplace fatalities also declining The fall in fire-related fatalities since the 1980s is evidence that the UK has become an increasingly safe society in recent decades. The significant fall in workplace deaths is also evidence of this, with fatal injuries at work declining from 651 in 1974 to just 138 in 2023/24. Injuries to workers have also fallen, with incidents almost halving between 2000/01 and 2023/24. The large shift from more dangerous jobs in manufacturing, production, and agriculture to service-orientated roles also certainly play a role in this decline as well.

The Carbon Monoxide and Gas Safety society (CO-Gas Safety) is an independent registered charity which aims to reduce the number of accidents from carbon monoxide poisoning and other gas dangers. DifficultiesThe prompt diagnosis of carbon monoxide poisoning can be extremely difficult due to dissipatory characteristics of the carbon monoxide gas itself the myriad of non-specific symptoms which may mimic other illnesses. As a result of these difficulties the number of deaths or injuries associated with CO poisonings remained largely unknown until the establishment of CO-Gas Safety. Database Identifying the potential opportunity to identify the cause, and subsequently reduce the number of carbon monoxide poisoning related deaths and injuries, CO-Gas Safety have collected information relating to cases of unintentional poisoning caused by the carbon monoxide produced by fuels used in combustion appliances from 1995 to present. Specifically, any incident where a fire or appliance involving combustion was intentionally used, but the resulting carbon monoxide poisoning was not expected and was avoidable. In making that distinction it is clarified that deaths or injuries from carbon monoxide produced by unintentional fire or flames are not included in this analysis. These data not only detail the cumulative number of deaths from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning they also detail the share of these deaths by causative appliance. Appliances This statistic presents the share of deaths from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1995 to 2023, by appliance type. In this period, central heating boiler systems, which includes mains gas, oil and solid fuel systems and back boiler systems, were responsible for the greatest share of deaths from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning attributed to any single appliance, attributed to ** percent of recorded cases. The second largest share of deaths was attributed to room heaters with **** percent, followed by engines, cookers, and gas fires, with **** percent, ***** percent and ***** percent respectively. From these findings its unsurprising that the greatest number of deaths from unintentional carbon monoxide poisonings occur at home. Despite this only ten percent respondents in Northern Ireland said that they protect themselves from carbon monoxide poisoning by regularly testing their carbon monoxide alarm, and only half of the respondents have installed a carbon monoxide alarm in their home to protect against carbon monoxide poisoning.