Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
We can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service does hold the information you have requested.
Questions and final response:
Question 1 – "Please supply me with data relating to fires on balconies on residential buildings in your area, as follows. ·
How many fires involving balconies occurred in total between 1st August 2023 and 31st July 2024? · In the same period,
how many fires occurred where balconies were found to have contributed to the spread of the fire across the external walls? ·
Please provide data on the causes of any fires that started on balconies in the period (ie; barbecue, discarded cigarette, electrical appliance fault, etc.) and the number of occurrences for each cause.
Suppose your incident recording system does not include ""balcony"" as a recorded location.
Could you please perform a search on free text fields in your database for the term, as I have found in the past that this often returns useable data.
Response
Please see attached spreadsheet containing the data requested.
Using the free text search, we can see three incidents that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service (ECFRS) have attended since 1ˢᵗ August 2023 through to 31ˢᵗ July 2024, where balcony/balconies were mentioned in either the property type or the location of the fire.
The main cause of fire is not recorded on any of the incidents that we attended.
We hope you find this information useful.
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Incident and other data is published on our transparency site. Incident Data (essex- fire.gov.uk).
Please note that the response and data released to you as part of this request will be published on our website http://transparency.essex-fire.gov.uk/.
All requests will be anonymised and no personal information including contact details will be disclosed as part of this process.
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Thank you for your interest in Essex County Fire and Rescue Service, we hope this satisfies your request.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to apply for an internal review.
Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of your original email and should be sent to informationgovernance@essex-fire.gov.uk or sent to our postal address: Internal Review, Information Governance Team, Kelvedon Park, Rivenhall, Witham, Essex CM8 3HB.
Please ensure you quote the above reference number in all future communications.