England’s fire safety hotspots and high risk areas

To what extent are fire safety regulations taken serious in workplaces and public buildings in England?

We know that stringent checks, trained staff and maintained premises can not only saves lives, but are also required by fire safety law. But how well are the country’s regions in putting them into practice?

Here we explore newly published data that reveals how robust fire safety systems are in England’s non-domestic buildings.

The report, which ranks areas of the country in order of safety standard success, highlights the best and worst places for fire safety and an increasing trend for poor ratings.

Results vary wildly, with the highest fire and rescue service recording 92% satisfactory checks in its area (Cheshire) and another recording only 8% when audited (Humberside).

This independent, unique study has been obtained by CE Safety from reliable sources via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and the Office of National Statistics (ONS). It examines statistics from all of England’s fire and rescue services.

It is broken down by English regions, taking into account various factors:

How many fire audits have taken place there?
How many satisfactory audits were there?
How many fire staff are qualified to undertake audits in the region?
The number of accidental fires in non-domestic or commercial buildings
The number of those buildings without fire alarms
Areas where fire safety is declining

Top 5 fire safety hotspots in England

This data looks specifically at all buildings that are not homes or houses, including only those categorised as ‘non-domestic’. They include all kinds of workplaces and public buildings, including universities and schools, care homes, shops, restaurants, pubs, hospitals, factories and places of worship.

We break down the full findings below, but to summarise:

Leicestershire – Ranked at number one, this region was the most consistent across all kinds of factors, including fire safety pass rates (85% of satisfactory audits), a higher than average number of audits carried out and a lower rate of missing fire alarms. It is also consistent in its scoring for all kinds of different buildings.
Durham – This area of the north-east was second best overall, scoring particularly well with the number of audits have taken place there (11.3%) as well as having the most qualified fire staff to carry out formal audits per population.
Nottinghamshire – This region came out third, with 8.5% of buildings audited and 81% of those gaining a satisfactory pass.
Cheshire – This area received the most satisfactory passes of buildings that were checked, with a 92% pass rate, the highest in England. Despite this high percentage, it scored lower in other factors, which is why it is lower down the rankings.
Cambridgeshire – Achieved 88% satisfactory audits and lower than average accidental building fires.

Which region fared the worst?

Humberside – This area scored the worst for fire safety in its buildings for several reasons, including the lowest audit satisfactory ratings (8%) and more than half of fires were in buildings that didn’t have a fire alarm. Humberside also had the highest number of fires and most types of premises reached huge unsatisfactory ratings (e.g. 95% of hotels failed inspections and 94.5% of shops.) In addition, building owners here were slapped with more than £8k in prosecution fines over the last two financial years.
Lancashire – This region fell short with just 12% of satisfactory audits, the second lowest in the country. It also had a high number of fires in non-residential buildings per population, with 328. Four prosecutions in two years totalled £142,500 in fines for building owners.
Devon and Somerset – This region only recorded 0.59% of audits and just 28% of these were considered satisfactory.
Cleveland – Here had the least fire alarms found at the scene of an incident (69.5% of non-dwelling fires had no fire alarm.)
Cumbria – With only 39% of audits returning as satisfactory and a high rate of accidental fires, this region comes in a number five for poor performance.

Areas with the sharpest fall in fire safety success

Our data also shows a notable decline of inspection results in some regions, emphasising a potentially growing concern of unsecure buildings and breaches of legislation:

Region	Satisfactory audits 2022/23	Satisfactory audits 2023/24	Satisfactory audits 2024/25
Cumbria	54%	54%	39%
Northumberland	53%	38%	28%
Greater Manchester	72%	58%	59%
Northamptonshire	84%	84%	64%

In addition to the table results, East Sussex’s results fell from 77% of satisfactory audits in 2022/23 to 43% the following year.

Lincolnshire dropped to 64% of satisfactory audits from previously maintained 80% results, and Buckinghamshire dropped a drastic 53% between 2021/22 and 2024/25.

Hereford and Worcester went from low to lower in its satisfactory ratings, from 37% to 29%, despite the fact it increased its number of audits carried out on buildings (840 to 1,362).

Did any regions have improvements?

It’s not all bad news. The data does show improvements in pass rates in some areas between 2021/22 and 2024/25, including Hertfordshire (37% to 89%, but a decrease of 823 full audits completed), as well as North Yorkshire (62% to 82%, but reported audits decreasing by 708), and Hampshire and Isle of Wight (43%- 61% with audits recorded more than doubling in that time).

Other areas maintained strong results, including Bedfordshire (above 75%) and Cheshire (consistency above 85%).

Why is it important to comply with fire safety regulations?

Our research for this study revealed a total of £142,500 in fines were rolled out in Lancashire over two years to building owners, proving that a lack of care and compliance can cost greatly, even without any real fire damage.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 all businesses are required to carry out a thorough fire risk assessment (FRA) by law.

This mandatory and important document is the first thing enforcement officers ask to see when carrying out inspections, and it should include everything involved with fire safety within the premises.

Breaches of the law, leading to fines and prosecutions, are usually a results of a business failing to produce suitable and sufficient fire risk assessments, or the findings in the FRA haven’t been carried out adequately.

Why are pass rates declining in some areas?

It is not clear as to why some buildings in England are showing declining results in recent years.

As well as poor FRAs, these may be down to specific failures such as poorly maintained extinguishers, equipment, fire doors, automatic fire detection or sprinkler systems, or simply blocked exits or escape routes.

Perhaps there’s a wider issue, with pressure on personnel or lack of leadership in place, and therefore compliance for fire safety training? Or could it be services are under strain, with ageing and unmaintained buildings struggling?

Fire safety training specialist at CE Safety, Gary Ellis, said: “If you own a building or workplace in England or the UK, there are strict measures in place you must abide by, from appointing a fire marshal to having the correct fire doors installed, to keeping updated risk assessments to thorough fire prevention efforts, including working fire alarm systems.

“The importance of ensuring audits take place in buildings across the country cannot be understated – there are still thousands of fires in workplaces and public buildings in the UK every year. This is an area I hope to see improve radically in the near future, however buildings managers and owners should not wait until they are penalised before they act when it comes to fire safety.

“The responsibility is yours and should be treated with the utmost importance.”

A breakdown of the study findings in full

Top five regions for fire safety:

Leicestershire ranked first in the study with the best fire safety practices. Looking at the factors that most contributed to this:
In 2024/25, 5% of known premises were audited (higher than the national average of 3%). This lower percentage could likely be attributed to the area having one of the lower rates of fire staff that are qualified to conduct audits per its population.
However, of these audits, 85% were found to be satisfactory demonstrating that buildings in the area are relatively fire safe.
It also had one of the lower rates of no fire alarms being found at non-dwelling fire incidents, with 30% of fires not having an alarm.
Looking at satisfactory pass rates for specific building types in the area, Leicestershire was consistent across all premises, with no specific buildings having higher or lower satisfactory pass rates than others.
Durham came in second as the region with the best fire safety. Looking at the factors that Durham did particularly well in:
In 2024/25 Durham had the highest percentage of audits done in buildings known to the local fire and rescue service (FRS) at 11.3%.
It also had the highest number of staff qualified to carry out fire audits in comparison to the population of the FRS area.
With having the highest percentage of audits, it also meant there was more room to find fire safety issues, as only just over half of buildings (51%) of buildings audited were satisfactory and deemed fire safe
Despite this, 55% of fires in non-dwelling buildings in Durham were found to not have had a fire alarm.
Looking specifically at the building types that had the highest pass rates in Durham, 82% of further education premises had satisfactory audits and 72% of schools, however, only 22% of care homes audited were found to be following fire safety regulations, meaning that 88% of care homes were unsatisfactory.
Nottinghamshire ranked third in the study, looking at individual factors:
8.5% of buildings were audited.
81% of audits resulted in a satisfactory pass.
32.5% of fires didn’t have an alarm present at the time of the incident.
Cheshire ranked 4th in the study: 92% of audits resulted in a satisfactory pass – the highest satisfactory pass rate in England.
42.6% of fires didn’t have an alarm present at the time of the incident.
Cambridgeshire ranked 5th, looking at individual factors: 88% of audits resulted in a satisfactory pass rate.
It also had one of the lowest rates of accidental non-dwelling fires per the area’s population at 126 fires, with the average across England’s FRS areas being 206 fires.

Top five worst ranking regions for fire safety:

Humberside ranked as number one for having the worst fire safety in its buildings. Looking at contributing factors, the region had: The lowest score for the percentage of audits that were satisfactory at 8%.
51.4% of fires in non-dwelling buildings didn’t have a fire alarm.
One of the highest numbers of accidental non-dwelling building fires per population with a total of 194 fires (population is 962,532).
Across the majority of its premise types, Humberside saw mass unsatisfactory audits, 95% of hotels audited failed inspections and 94.5% of shops also had unsatisfactory audits.
Furthermore, building owners in Humberside received a total of £8,685.01 in prosecution fines over the last two financial years.
Lancashire ranked in second place for fire safety standards falling short. Individual factors contributing to this included: The second lowest percentage of satisfactory audits at 12%.
The area also had one of the highest numbers of accidental non-dwelling building fires per population, with a total of 328 fires and a population size of 1,601,645.
Furthermore, building owners in Lancashire received a total of £142,500 in fines across four prosecutions in 2023/24 and 2024/25.
Devon & Somerset ranked 3rd: The area had one of the lowest rates of audits, at 0.59% of premises audited. Only 28% of these audits were reported to be satisfactory.
Cleveland ranked 4th: Cleveland had the highest rate of fire alarms not being found at the scene of an incident, at 69.5% of non-dwelling fires.
Cumbria ranked 5th: The region also had some of the lowest rates of satisfactory audits at 39% of audits coming back as satisfactory in 2024/25.
Furthermore, they also had a high rate of accidental non-dwelling fires per its population at 102 fires and a population size of 510,680.

This study analysed data both presented by ONS data for England and uncovered through FOI requests from 44 Fire and Rescue Services in England, including London Fire Brigade.

New report ranks England’s fire safety hotspots and high risk areas