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Guidance

Fire statistics guidance

This page contains all guidance, quality and definition documents associated with fire statistics.

Updates to this page

From:
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Published:
13 May 2021
Last updated:
30 September 2026
Show all updates

  1. Changes related to Detailed analysis of non-fire incidents, year ending March 2026 including the insertion of guidance on response times to non-fire incidents.

  2. Small amendments to recognise that some items are not current and are now worthy of being in the guidance rather than statistical releases.

  3. Updated 'Fire and Rescue Service workforce and pension statistics quality and methodology information' and 'Fire statistics definitions' to accompany 'Fire workforce and pension statistics, year ending March 2024'.

  4. Updated 'Fire statistics definitions' to accompany publication of 'Detailed analysis of fires, England, April 2023 to March 2024'.

  5. Updated 'Fire statistics definitions' to accompany publication of 'Fire and rescue incident statistics, year ending September 2023'.

  6. Added 'Fire and Rescue Service workforce and pension statistics quality and methodology information'.

  7. Updated 'Fire statistics definitions'.

  8. Updated 'Fire statistics definitions'.

  9. Updated 'Fire statistics definitions'.

  10. Updated 'Fire statistics definitions' HTML version, 'Fire and rescue incident statistics: Methodology and quality report' and 'Fire statistics definitions' PDF versions removed.

  11. First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Fire and Rescue Service workforce and pension statistics quality and methodology information

HTML

Fire and rescue incident statistics: Methodology and quality report

HTML

The XLS incident recording taxonomy hierarchical lists vers 1-0p

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 154 KB

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

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If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternativeformats@homeoffice.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Incident recording system - questions and lists - version 1.6 - (XML schemas v1-0p) in use from April 2012

PDF, 1.47 MB, 117 pages

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

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Fire statistics definitions

HTML

Details

On 1 April 2025 responsibility for fire and rescue transferred from the Home Office to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

 Methodology and quality report

This document gives detailed information on the dataset used to compile fire and rescue incident statistics and its quality.

Guidance on Incident recording system for fire and rescue authorities

These documents describe the questions and options that are recorded for each type of incident within the incident recording system by fire and rescue authorities across Great Britain. The document is for users of the data both in the fire and rescue authorities and elsewhere.

Fire statistics definitions

This document brings together all definitions from operational and non-operational statistics. Previously these were in separate documents.

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