A successful year for Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service

Over the last year Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service has made significant progress in making Tyne and Wear a safer place.

Detailed in its Annual Report for 2007/2008 are a number of significant achievements. These include:

* Making more than 33,500 homes safer by carrying out free home fire safety checks. These are targeted at houses at greatest risk of fire. As well as offering advice on how to keep your home safer from fire and how to make an escape plan it includes fitting free smoke alarms and swapping chip pans for thermostatically controlled deep fat fryers, where appropriate.

Other successes include a:

* 27% reduction in the number of injuries from accidental fires in the home
* 38% reduction in the number of kitchen fires in the home
* 31% reduction in the number of accidental fires in the home
* 23% reduction in the number of property fires (excluding road vehicles)
* 20% reduction in the number of vehicle fires started deliberately
* 18% reduction in the number of property fires started deliberately
* 14% reduction in the number of fires involving road vehicles
* 14% reduction in the number of fire calls attended
* 13% reduction in the number of anti-social behaviour fires (excluding property or road vehicles)
* 10% reduction in the number of false alarms due to automatic fire detection
* 6% reduction in the number of fires started deliberately

Overall the Service has made big improvements in more than 70% of its national and local targets. This beats all the other metropolitan brigades apart from London.

Chief Fire Officer, Iain Bathgate at Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service, said: "This is a tremendous achievement and reflects the belief and commitment that our staff have to help create the safest community and to protect the lives of people in Tyne and Wear. It also shows the impact of our investment in community safety prevention work and in our excellent operational response service, which continues to be the fastest in the country.

"This successes also demonstrates to the people of Tyne and Wear what an excellent service they are receiving and how much safer they are. However, we are not complacent and we are always keen to see further improvements in helping to make Tyne and Wear a safer place to be."

A copy of the Annual Report is available at www.twfire.gov.uk

Actual figures for the successes are as follows:

* 27% reduction in the number of injuries from accidental fires in the home (from 61 to 44)
* 38% reduction in the number of kitchen fires in the home (from 1,295 to 801)
* 31% reduction in the number of accidental fires in the home (from 1,593 to 1,110)
* 23% reduction in the number of property fires (excluding road vehicles) (from 3,044 to 2,343)
* 20% reduction in the number of vehicle fires started deliberately (from 1,200 to 965)
* 18% reduction in the number of property fires started deliberately (from 875 to 721)
* 14% reduction in the number of fires involving road vehicles (from 1,457 to 1,258)
* 14% reduction in the number of fire calls attended (from 14,337 to 12,385)
* 13% reduction in the number of anti-social behaviour fires (excluding property or road vehicles) (from 9,113 to 7,895)
* 10% reduction in the number of false alarms due to automatic fire detection (from 3,112 to 2,698)
* 6% reduction in hte nubmer of fires started deliberately (from 5,738 to 5,397)