Fire and rescue services and their partners completed 588,855 home fire safety visits in England in the year ending March 2025 — up 2.9% on the year, with a record 85% of them targeted at households with at least one vulnerability and 98% delivered face-to-face. This page pulls together the UK’s home fire safety visit statistics: how many visits are carried out, who they reach, how they are delivered, and the person-centred approach that shapes them. The core data comes from MHCLG’s Fire prevention and protection statistics, England release and its FIRE1201 data table, with delivery context from the National Fire Chiefs Council’s person-centred framework and outcome context from MHCLG’s fire and rescue incident statistics.
It’s written for anyone who needs citable, up-to-date numbers on domestic fire prevention — fire and rescue services and their scrutiny leads, housing associations and care providers documenting referral pathways, charities working with older and disabled people, and journalists covering prevention and vulnerable-resident safety. Every figure is dated and sourced, and where a topic belongs on another page in our statistics cluster we carry a single headline here and link out rather than duplicate it.
Key facts and figures
- 588,855 home fire safety visits (HFSVs) were completed by fire and rescue services and partners in England in the year ending March 2025.
- +2.9% year-on-year growth, up from 571,994 in the year ending March 2024 (as restated in the current release).
- 85% of visits (501,123) were targeted at households with at least one vulnerability — the highest proportion since targeting data began in 2021.
- 98% of HFSVs were delivered face-to-face in the year ending March 2025, rather than remotely.
- 388,817 visits went to households with older and/or disabled residents in the year ending March 2025.
- 82% of visiting staff were firefighters, with visits averaging 1.8 staff members each.
- +4.0% rise in targeted visits to vulnerable households, up from 481,739 the previous year.
- 588,666 visits five years earlier (year ending March 2020) — leaving the 2024-25 total virtually unchanged over five years.
All figures are the latest available as of July 2026, and this page is updated when new data is released — MHCLG publishes its Fire prevention and protection statistics, England release and the FIRE1201 data table once a year in the autumn, covering the year ending March, so the whole page refreshes from one source family annually.
What is a home fire safety visit?
A home fire safety visit (HFSV) is a free, in-home check delivered by a fire and rescue service — usually by firefighters, sometimes with partner organisations — to help a household reduce its fire risk. In the year ending March 2025, 588,855 HFSVs were completed in England, according to MHCLG’s Fire prevention and protection statistics. During a visit, staff typically discuss escape routes and a bedtime routine, check or fit smoke alarms, and give tailored advice for the people who actually live there — which is why the visit works best when it reaches the households most at risk rather than the ones easiest to reach.
The terminology varies by service. Some brands the visit a “Safe and Well” visit and widens the conversation to include falls, wellbeing and social isolation alongside fire; others keep it tightly fire-focused. MHCLG counts them together under the HFSV heading, which is the figure used throughout this page. The visit sits at the domestic, preventative end of fire safety — it is entirely separate from the business-premises fire safety audits that fire services carry out under the Fire Safety Order, which are counted in the protection half of the same statistical release and covered on firemarshaltraining’s enforcement statistics page.
How many home fire safety visits are carried out each year?
Fire and rescue services and partners completed 588,855 home fire safety visits in England in the year ending March 2025, an increase of 2.9% on the 571,994 recorded the previous year (as restated in the current release), according to MHCLG. That is a modest recovery rather than a surge: the 2024-25 total is virtually identical to the 588,666 visits carried out five years earlier in the year ending March 2020, immediately before the pandemic disrupted in-home delivery.
The longer trend is downward. HFSV numbers have been on a general decline since national data collection began in the year ending March 2011, with a sharp fall around the pandemic and a partial recovery since. The two years of growth to March 2025 have returned activity roughly to its pre-pandemic level rather than exceeding it — a point worth keeping in view when a single year’s rise is quoted in isolation.
| Period (England) | Home fire safety visits | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Year ending March 2020 | 588,666 | Pre-pandemic baseline |
| Year ending March 2024 | 571,994 | Prior year (restated in current release) |
| Year ending March 2025 | 588,855 | Up 2.9% on the year; ~level with 2020 |
The FIRE1201 data table breaks the national total down by individual fire and rescue authority, so services can benchmark their own visit numbers against peers and against their own previous years. That per-service detail is what makes the release useful for local scrutiny, integrated risk management plans (IRMPs) and community risk management plans (CRMPs).
Who receives home fire safety visits?
85% of visits — 501,123 of the 588,855 total — were targeted at households with at least one vulnerability in the year ending March 2025, the highest proportion since targeting data collection began in 2021, according to MHCLG. Targeting is the whole point of the modern HFSV programme: with finite firefighter time, the priority is reaching the households where a fire is most likely to happen and most likely to be fatal, not maximising the raw count of doors knocked.
Targeted visits to vulnerable households rose 4.0% on the year, up from 481,739 the previous year — outpacing the 2.9% growth in the overall total, which means the share going to at-risk households is still increasing. In total, 388,817 visits went to households with older and/or disabled residents. The breakdown of the targeted visits shows how heavily the programme concentrates on age and disability:
| Targeted household type | Share of targeted visits | Visits (YE Mar 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| At least one person aged 65+ and at least one disabled person | 29% | 168,261 |
| A person aged 65+ with no disabled person | 28% | 166,344 |
| A disabled person, all residents under 65 | 9.2% | 54,212 |
Older and disabled people dominate because the evidence base points that way: age, living alone, reduced mobility, sensory impairment and conditions affecting judgement all raise both the chance of an accidental dwelling fire and the chance of not escaping one. The targeting data confirms that services are directing the majority of their prevention effort at exactly those groups.
How are home fire safety visits delivered?
98% of home fire safety visits were delivered face-to-face in the year ending March 2025, with only a small remainder handled remotely by phone or online, according to MHCLG. That near-total return to in-person delivery matters, because the value of an HFSV lies in what staff can see and do in the home — testing alarms, spotting hazards, and reading a household’s real circumstances — none of which translates well to a phone call. The brief spike in remote visits during the pandemic has effectively unwound.
Visits are overwhelmingly a firefighter-delivered service: 82% of visiting staff were firefighters, with visits averaging 1.8 staff members each. The remainder are delivered by dedicated prevention or community safety teams and partner organisations. That firefighter-led model is deliberate — it puts operational crews in the community, builds local knowledge of who and where the high-risk households are, and lends the visit the credibility that comes with the uniform.
The partner element is where the referral pathways come in. Housing associations, domiciliary care and social-care providers, GPs, occupational therapists and charities for older and disabled people are all positioned to spot a household that would benefit from a visit and refer it into the service. Those pathways are how the programme reaches vulnerable people who would never think to request a visit themselves — the ones the 85% targeting figure depends on.
What is the person-centred approach behind HFSVs?
The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) Person-Centred Framework is the guidance that shapes how home fire safety visits are delivered, moving the service away from a one-size-fits-all checklist toward advice built around the individual in front of the visiting officer. Rather than reading the same script at every door, staff assess the specific risks a person faces — their mobility, their medication, whether they smoke, whether they use emollient creams or medical oxygen, how they cook, and how they would actually escape — and tailor the fire safety plan to them.
This is why the targeting statistics and the delivery model fit together. A person-centred visit is only worth delivering face-to-face, and it is only worth the firefighter time if it reaches the people whose circumstances genuinely raise their risk. The framework also underpins the partner referral pathways: professionals already working with a vulnerable person are best placed to flag the risk factors — hoarding, self-neglect, reduced mobility — that a person-centred visit is designed to address. The NFCC framework is rolling guidance, updated periodically, rather than an annual statistical release.
How do visits relate to fire outcomes?
Home fire safety visits sit upstream of the outcomes measured in MHCLG’s incident statistics, and a little context shows why the prevention effort matters. There were 22,877 accidental dwelling fires in England in the year ending March 2025, and 208 fire-related fatalities occurred in dwelling fires in the same period — up 14% from 182 the year before, according to MHCLG’s fire and rescue incident statistics. Dwelling fires remain where most fire deaths happen, which is precisely why prevention activity is concentrated on the home.
One outcome measure is worth a single cross-linked mention: as of March 2024, an estimated 92% of English households had a working smoke alarm, according to the English Housing Survey via MHCLG. Smoke-alarm ownership and effectiveness are covered in depth on firesafetyawarenesstraining’s smoke alarm statistics page rather than here — a home fire safety visit is one of the main routes by which a service checks or fits an alarm in a home that lacks a working one, so the two topics connect at the doorstep even though the numbers live on separate pages.
The honest caveat is that the visit statistics record activity, not proven causation. The releases tell us how many visits were carried out and who they reached; they do not, on their own, isolate how many fires or deaths were prevented as a result. What they do establish is that the effort is concentrated where the risk is — vulnerable, older and disabled households — which is the strongest available signal that the prevention resource is being directed sensibly.
Frequently asked questions
What is a home fire safety visit (HFSV)?
A home fire safety visit is a free, in-home check delivered by a fire and rescue service, usually by firefighters, to help a household reduce its fire risk. Staff discuss escape plans, check or fit smoke alarms and give tailored advice. Some services call it a “Safe and Well” visit and widen it to include falls and wellbeing.
How many home fire safety visits are carried out in England each year?
588,855 in the year ending March 2025, up 2.9% on the 571,994 recorded the previous year, according to MHCLG’s Fire prevention and protection statistics. That is roughly level with the 588,666 visits carried out five years earlier, before the pandemic.
Who qualifies for a free home fire safety visit?
Visits are prioritised for households at greater risk — 85% of visits in the year ending March 2025 (501,123) were targeted at households with at least one vulnerability, and 388,817 went to homes with older and/or disabled residents. Older people, those living alone, disabled people and those with mobility, sensory or health conditions are the priority groups, though any household can request advice.
How do I book or refer someone for a home fire safety visit?
Visits are arranged through your local fire and rescue service, most of which take online or phone requests. Because 85% of visits are targeted, referral pathways matter: housing associations, care providers, GPs, occupational therapists and charities for older and disabled people can all refer a vulnerable person into the service, which is how the programme reaches people who would not request a visit themselves.
Where do home fire safety visit statistics come from?
The core data is MHCLG’s Fire prevention and protection statistics, England release and its FIRE1201 data table, both published annually in the autumn for the year ending March. Delivery context comes from the NFCC Person-Centred Framework, and dwelling-fire outcome context from MHCLG’s fire and rescue incident statistics.
Home prevention and workplace preparedness are two halves of the same fire safety picture. If you are responsible for fire safety at work, the same principle applies indoors: risk is reduced by people who know what to check and how to act. Our Fire Warden Training course covers evacuation, sweeps, assembly-point management and everyday fire safety checks — £18 per learner, RoSPA approved and CPD accredited, 60 to 90 minutes online, with an instant certificate on passing and bulk discounts from 10 delegates.
Related guides
- Fire and Rescue Service Statistics UK: Incidents, Stations, Staffing & Funding
- Fire Evacuation Statistics UK: Rescues, Drills & Behaviour Data
- High-Rise Fire Statistics UK: Buildings, Incidents & Safety Data
- Fire Door Statistics UK: Failures, Inspections & Compliance Data
- Fire marshal: a complete UK guide to the role, duties and training
Sources & references
- MHCLG — Fire prevention and protection statistics, England, April 2024 to March 2025
- MHCLG — Fire statistics data tables (FIRE1201: home fire safety visits by fire and rescue authority)
- MHCLG — Fire prevention and protection statistics, England, April 2023 to March 2024 (prior year for trend)
- MHCLG — Fire and rescue incident statistics, England, year ending March 2025 (dwelling-fire outcome context)
- National Fire Chiefs Council — Person-Centred Framework Guidance
- Fire Industry Association — England’s latest fire prevention data highlights support for vulnerable households
- International Fire & Safety Journal — What England’s latest fire prevention data reveals about vulnerable households
- CHSG — MHCLG issue 2024-2025 fire prevention and protection statistics (summary)
Home prevention keeps people safer at home — workplace preparedness does the same at work. Get your team certified with accredited, workplace-ready training.
Explore the Fire Warden Training course →
Mark writes about workplace health & safety, fire safety and accredited online training for Fire Warden Training, part of Online CPD Academy.