We have carried out tens of thousands of home safety visits in South Yorkshire over the last decade, including the fitting of hundreds of thousands of free smoke alarms. We believe this work has contributed to big falls in the number of accidental house fires during that time.

However, the majority of the visits we have undertaken have been to homes which are unlikely to ever suffer a serious fire. This is based upon detailed analysis of our historical incident data and the factors which we know are likely to contribute to a person’s likelihood of suffering a fire.

To continue to reduce house fires, deaths and injuries we believe we need to become even more targeted in the way we deliver our prevention work.

To achieve this, we are changing our Home Safety Checks service from 1 March so that safety advice continues to be given to all, but home visits by fire service staff are only offered for free to those most at risk of fire based upon some clearly defined risk criteria.

Those who self-refer themselves to us, but who are deemed to be lower risk based upon these criteria, will be offered the information and advice to carry out a home safety check themselves. You can find out more or request a visit using our online form here

People who are referred to us by our network of more than 130 Safe & Well referral partners will continue to receive a free visit by a member of fire service staff.

The changes we are making were one of the changes we announced in plans which were published in April 2017, following a period of public consultation. You can read our Integrated Risk Management Plan 2017-20  in full here