London fires up 3.2% yet enforcement action falls 8.4%, with new data showing worst affected boroughs
LONDON, UK. September 1st, 2026 – Fifty-six per cent of the fires attended by the London Fire Brigade over the last twelve months of published data started in refuse containers, loose refuse or domestic gardens, according to a borough-level index published today by RiskFire.
These are the categories most sensitive to hot, dry weather, and they now make up the majority of London’s fire load. Small refuse and rubbish container fires alone account for 32 per cent of incidents, at 2,203 fires. Domestic garden vegetation accounts for 12 per cent and loose refuse a further 11.9 per cent.
By comparison, fires in single-occupancy houses account for 19.1 per cent, and fires in purpose-built flats of up to nine storeys for a combined 24.9 per cent.
The seasonal pattern is pronounced. The busiest month in the current window, July 2025, recorded 2,138 fires. The quietest, February 2026, recorded 935. The summer peak ran roughly 2.3 times the winter floor.
Total fire incidents rose 3.2 per cent over the period to 19,035. The current window includes the heatwaves of May and June 2026.
Over the same period, formal enforcement action by the London Fire Brigade fell 8.4 per cent to 1,152 actions, even as risk-based fire safety audits rose 6.6 per cent to 11,955. The enforcement rate fell 1.6 percentage points to around 10 per cent of audits.
Exposure is also uneven across the capital. Newham recorded 889 fires over the period, Westminster 886 and Brent 768. At the other end, Kensington and Chelsea recorded 276, Kingston upon Thames 273 and the City of London 89. South London recorded 4,119 fires against 3,356 in East London.
Enforcement varies as widely. The rate ran from 20.9 per cent of audits in Ealing down to 2.5 per cent in Bexley, against a London-wide rate of 9.6 per cent. A managing agent with buildings in both boroughs is working under materially different odds of an audit ending in formal action.
A spokesperson for RiskFire editorial team said: “The fire load in London is not what most people picture. The majority of what the Brigade attends starts outside the building, in bins, loose refuse and gardens, and those are precisely the categories that hot dry spells inflate while the dwelling-fire baseline barely moves.
“ If summers keep getting hotter, that is the part of the curve that responds first. Meanwhile enforcement action has fallen while incidents and audits have both risen.”
The Index cautions against reading a single year as a trend. Weather-driven categories swing sharply between months, and RiskFire recommends reading the five-year series rather than a twelve-month window when assessing direction.
