Further supplementary memorandum from Communities and Local Government (DAR 09 - 07)

 

Revised DSO6.1 Fire Fatalities Indicator data

 

I am writing to advise you of a change to the reporting of performance against two of the indicators for Departmental Strategic Objective (DSO) 6, since the Department's Annual Report was published earlier this year. The indicators concerned are:

 

§ DSO 6.1 (ii) - number of fatalities due to primary fires per 100,000 of the population; and

 

§ DSO 6.2 (i) - number of deliberate primary fires per 100,000 of the population.

 

The indicators for DSO6.1 and 6.2 are calculated from data published in the quarterly National Statistics Fire Statistics Monitor publication. The latest publication was on 25 September, and this was a few days after the response provided to the CLG Select Committee's Annual Report Inquiry 2009 written questions.

 

The answer provided to Q27b) noted the imminent publication of revised 2007‑08 data and promised to provide an update, which is as follows:

 

§ Revised 2007-08 data show that fire fatalities were actually two per cent lower than in 2006-07. This compares to the provisional data in the Department's 2009 Annual Report, which reported a one per cent increase in the number of fire fatalities in 2007-08 compared to 2006-07.

 

As noted in the answer to 27b), the revised figures arise from cross-checking of reported fire deaths against coroner's court death certificate records. This process normally identifies a net reduction in the provisional number of fire deaths, due to fatalities which were later found at Coroner's Court to have not been caused by fire. For 2007-08, the revised data show 358 fire fatalities, which is 0.70 per 100,000 population. The revision to total number of fire deaths was largely due to fatalities in road vehicles having been caused before the spread of fire.

 

In the case of DSO 6.2(i), the revised data show 97.5 deliberate primary fires per 100,000 population in 2007-08, a decrease of 14 per cent since 2006-07, rather than the 97.0, a decrease of 15 per cent, provisionally recorded in the Annual Report. The reason for this is reclassification of a small proportion of incidents that were provisionally reported as motive unknown, being reclassified to deliberate, as a result of subsequent information, for example following investigation.

 

October 2009