Fire and Rescue Statistics, Scotland, 2013-14

3. Background

The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 established the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as the national fire and rescue service of Scotland, replacing the eight former fire and rescue services as of 1^st April 2013. The SFRS is responsible for fire and rescue services across Scotland and is governed by an appointed Board. In addition, Her Majesty's Fire Service Inspectorate in Scotland exists to provide independent, risk based and professional inspection of the service, independent of the SFRS and the Scottish Government.

These statistics are compiled from reports submitted by the SFRS to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) on incidents they have attended.

In April 2009, Scotland started to use the electronic Incident Recording System (IRS). This caused discontinuities in some of the time series included in this publication, details of which are contained in section 6.2.1.

Further information on the sources of data, methods and definitions of all terms used in this bulletin are provided at the rear of the publication (see sections 5 and 6).