In 2004, Communities and Local Government invested £25 million pump priming capital over four years in the Home Fire Risk Check initiative. This money enabled all fire and rescue services to embed a programme of home visits where they would provide tailored fire safety advice to households. As part of a home visit, all fire and rescue services would, if necessary, install smoke alarms to vulnerable households free of charge.
This funding resulted in fire and rescue services in England installing over 2.4 million smoke alarms. Many fire and rescue authorities may also have invested in and installed further smoke alarms outside of and even before this grant.