Fires

Mr. Stephen O'Brien
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many fires there were in the NHS Estate in each year since 1995; and what the cost was in each year.

Andy Burnham
These figures have been extracted from the information contained in the fire database held by the Department. National health service trusts are required to report all outbreaks of fire to which the fire and rescue service attend. The figures below represent those incidents reported to the Department during the period 1994-95 to 2004-05, and therefore may not be representative of the actual number of incidents attended by the fire services. NHS foundation trusts are not mandated to provide information in relation to fire incidents.

Table 1 represents the total number of fire incidents reported to the Department between 1994-95 and 2004-05 which are held in the database.

---------------------------
|         |Number of fires|
---------------------------
|1994-95  |606            |
---------------------------
|1995-96  |1,017          |
---------------------------
|1996-97  |1,038          |
---------------------------
|1997-98  |1,136          |
---------------------------
|1998-99  |912            |
---------------------------
|1999-2000|1,125          |
---------------------------
|2000-01  |1,045          |
---------------------------
|2001-02  |948            |
---------------------------
|2002-03  |809            |
---------------------------
|2003-04  |832            |
---------------------------
|2004-05  |1,194          |
---------------------------


A total of 10,662 fires were reported to the Department during this period.

Table 2 shows the maximum cost identified to the Department resulting from the reported fire incidents during the period held in the database.

----------------------------
|         |Maximum cost (£)|
----------------------------
|1994-95  |100,000         |
----------------------------
|1995-96  |66,000          |
----------------------------
|1996-97  |350,000         |
----------------------------
|1997-98  |1,000,000       |
----------------------------
|1998-99  |1,000,000       |
----------------------------
|1999-2000|120,000         |
----------------------------
|2000-01  |150,000         |
----------------------------
|2001-02  |300,000         |
----------------------------
|2002-03  |10,000,000      |
----------------------------
|2003-04  |500,000         |
----------------------------
|2004-05  |1,000,000       |
----------------------------


The total maximum cost of the reported fires in the period is £14,586,000.