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London sees dip in home visits by firefighters
The number of fire safety visits carried out by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) dropped marginally over the last two years, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal.
The figures, obtained by the Green Party and shown exclusively to Inside Housing, show that the LFB visited 84,887 homes in 2016/17, down from 86,987 in 2014/15 – a 2% decrease.
This remains comfortably ahead of its target to visit 73,500 properties per year, but comes amid a context of fire station closures and a sharp reduction in inspecting officers over the past decade.
The figures showed that visits to social housing fell more significantly, but still make up the vast majority of the inspections carried out. In 2016/17, 46,226 visits were made – 4% less than in 2014/15, when 48,063 social homes were visited.
Visits to private tenants fell from 11,971 visits in 2014/15 to 10,781 in 2016/17, a decrease of 10%.
The only tenure to increase was owner-occupied, to which visits went up by 7%, from 24,186 in 2014/15 to 25,907 in 2016/17.
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The LFB carries out visits to inform residents about safety and check and replace smoke alarms. It targets properties where it believes there is a potential fire risk.
An LFB spokesperson said: “The brigade does not prioritise visits by type of property. Our focus is to visit vulnerable people who have lifestyle characteristics that put them at greater risk from fire or live in areas with increased fire risk.”
According to the English Housing Survey, social housing is on average more at risk from fire than any other tenure.
Visits to social housing in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – where the Grenfell Tower disaster took place – fell more than any other London borough, with 946 social homes visited in 2016/17, down from 1,549 in 2014/15.
Analysis by Inside Housing shows that many areas with reduced visit numbers had a fire station closed nearby by previous London mayor Boris Johnson (see map).
Dave Sibert, fire safety advisor at the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), told Inside Housing: “They [the LFB] closed 10 fire stations a couple of years ago. That’s a decent percentage of firefighters gone who would have spent their time going out and doing home fire safety checks.”
The LFB has also lost more than 25% of its inspecting officers (who investigate breaches of fire safety law) over the past decade, with the equivalent of 152 full-time inspecting officers employed in 2017, down from 204 in 2007, according to a Freedom of Information Act request response published on its website in July.
The spokesperson added: “LFB far exceeded its target of 73,500 home fire safety visits last year with more than half of the 84,500 visits carried out in social housing accommodation – exactly the same as the previous year. Fifteen of the 33 London boroughs last year saw an increase in home fire safety visits to social housing properties than the previous year.”
