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Fire Safety During the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Lessons Learned from a Unique Crisis

How the pandemic both reduced and created new fire safety risks across the UK

Introduction

When the UK Government announced its first national lockdown in March 2020, the immediate focus was understandably on public health. But for fire safety professionals, building managers, and responsible persons, the sudden and dramatic change in how buildings were used — or ceased to be used — created a complex and largely unprecedented set of fire safety challenges. Some risks fell sharply. Others rose significantly. And the period as a whole exposed weaknesses in fire safety management that had previously gone unnoticed.

This article examines both sides of the picture — the ways in which lockdown genuinely reduced certain fire risks, and the new and aggravated risks that the pandemic created.

The Positives: Where Fire Risk Reduced

Fewer people, fewer ignition sources

The most obvious benefit was straightforward: empty buildings have fewer ignition sources. With offices, retail premises, restaurants, schools, and entertainment venues standing largely vacant, the day-to-day fire risks associated with human activity — cooking, electrical equipment in use, smoking, hot works, and accidental ignition — fell significantly. Fire and Rescue Service statistics for 2020-21 showed a notable reduction in accidental fires in non-domestic premises during the periods of strictest lockdown.

Reduced arson in some settings

Whilst arson remained a persistent concern, the dramatic reduction in footfall in town and city centres meant that some opportunistic arson attacks — particularly those targeting commercial bins, outbuildings, and vacant retail units — reduced during the most restricted periods when very few people were on the streets.

Heightened awareness of home fire safety

With the entire population spending far more time at home, there was a genuine increase in public awareness of domestic fire safety. The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) and individual fire and rescue services ran targeted public safety campaigns encouraging people to test their smoke alarms, avoid leaving cooking unattended, and charge devices safely. Many households engaged with fire safety information for the first time.

Opportunity for building inspections

With commercial premises empty, some forward-thinking building managers and fire safety professionals used the lockdown period as an opportunity to carry out thorough fire risk assessment reviews, compartmentation surveys, fire door inspections, and remedial works that would have been far more disruptive during normal occupation. For some buildings, lockdown provided the rare opportunity of genuinely unoccupied access.

The Negatives: Where Fire Risk Increased

Vacant buildings — a significant and underappreciated risk

Paradoxically, empty buildings carry their own substantial fire safety risks — and these were widely underestimated during the pandemic. Unoccupied premises are more vulnerable to arson, as reduced footfall and security means that unauthorised access goes undetected for longer. Fires in vacant buildings are also far more likely to become serious before they are discovered, precisely because there is no one present to raise the alarm or call 999 in the early stages.

Many responsible persons made the mistake of assuming that an empty building required less fire safety attention. In fact, the opposite is often true. Fire and rescue services reported a number of serious fires in temporarily vacant commercial premises during the lockdown periods.

Fire safety systems neglected

One of the most concerning trends identified by fire safety professionals during and after the lockdowns was the neglect of fire safety system maintenance. With buildings closed and budgets under severe pressure, many organisations suspended or deferred the routine servicing of fire alarm systems, emergency lighting, fire extinguishers, sprinkler systems, and dry risers. Some buildings reopened after months of closure with fire safety systems that had not been tested, serviced, or inspected since before the pandemic began.

This was not merely poor practice — in most cases it represented a breach of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which does not contain a pandemic exemption. The duty to maintain fire safety systems does not pause because a building is temporarily empty.

Working from home — new domestic fire risks

The mass migration to home working created a set of domestic fire risks that had rarely been considered at scale before. Millions of homes were suddenly being used as offices, with electrical equipment running for far longer periods than domestic wiring was designed to accommodate. Extension leads and multi-way adaptors were heavily used, often in living rooms and bedrooms rather than purpose-built office environments. Laptop chargers, monitors, printers, and supplementary heating devices all added to the electrical load on domestic circuits. House fires attributed to electrical faults rose during the pandemic period.

Increased cooking fires

With restaurants, cafes, and takeaways closed during the strictest lockdown periods, the nation cooked at home to an unprecedented degree. The results were predictable — cooking-related fires in domestic properties increased significantly. Fire and rescue services reported rises in chip pan fires, unattended cooking incidents, and oven fires, particularly during the earlier lockdown when people were experimenting with home cooking for the first time.

Pressure on fire doors and escape routes in residential buildings

The shift to home working placed enormous pressure on residential buildings, particularly blocks of flats and Houses in Multiple Occupation. With residents present around the clock rather than absent during working hours, fire doors were opened and closed far more frequently, accelerating wear on self-closing devices and seals. Deliveries — already rising sharply due to the closure of physical retail — led to packages being left in communal areas and corridors, obstructing escape routes in direct contravention of fire safety requirements. In many buildings, the volume of cardboard packaging accumulating in bin stores and communal areas created a significant and largely unmanaged fire load.

Reduced fire safety training and drills

With workplaces closed or operating at severely reduced capacity, annual fire safety training and fire drills were widely deferred or cancelled entirely. When buildings eventually reopened — often with significant numbers of new staff who had never set foot in the premises before — many organisations found themselves operating with workforces who had received no recent fire safety instruction and had never participated in a fire drill for that building. This gap in training took considerable time and resource to address after reopening.

Mental health and fire risk

Fire safety professionals and researchers noted with concern the potential link between the mental health crisis that accompanied the pandemic and deliberate fire-setting. The stresses of lockdown — isolation, financial hardship, domestic conflict, and anxiety — are recognised risk factors for both accidental fires (distraction, impaired judgement) and deliberate ignition. Whilst direct causal data is difficult to establish, the correlation between periods of heightened social stress and fire incidents is well documented.

What the Pandemic Taught Us

The COVID-19 lockdowns were, in fire safety terms, a stress test that exposed several important weaknesses in how fire safety is managed in the UK.

First, they demonstrated that fire safety obligations do not have an off switch. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies regardless of whether a building is occupied, partially occupied, or temporarily vacant. Responsible persons who treated lockdown as a reason to suspend fire safety management found themselves with significant compliance gaps to address on reopening.

Second, the pandemic highlighted the importance of dynamic fire risk assessments. The five-step fire risk assessment process is specifically designed to respond to changes in the use, occupancy, and activities of a building. The sudden and dramatic changes brought about by lockdown — vacant premises, changed working patterns, new delivery volumes, altered occupancy — all represented material changes that should have triggered a formal review of the fire risk assessment. Many organisations failed to make that connection.

Third, the rise of home working has permanently changed the fire safety landscape. Even as offices have reopened, hybrid working patterns mean that millions of people continue to use their homes as workplaces for significant portions of the working week. Employers have a duty of care that extends to the home working environment, and domestic electrical safety, device charging, and escape arrangements all deserve attention that most homeworking policies have never addressed.

Finally, the pandemic underscored the value of professional fire safety expertise. Buildings that were managed by organisations with qualified fire safety professionals — or that had commissioned professional fire risk assessments and maintained them properly — fared significantly better in terms of compliance and safety during the pandemic than those that had treated fire safety as an administrative afterthought.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 lockdowns were an extraordinary period that tested every aspect of building management, fire safety included. Whilst the reduction in building occupancy brought some genuine reduction in day-to-day fire risk, the wider picture was one of new and aggravated hazards — vacant buildings, neglected systems, overloaded domestic electrics, blocked escape routes, deferred training, and the quiet erosion of fire safety culture during a period of crisis.

The responsible persons and organisations that emerged from the pandemic in the strongest position were those who understood that fire safety is not an activity to be suspended in difficult times — it is a continuous, legally mandated duty of care to the people who use their buildings.

For a professional fire risk assessment of your premises, contact Whale Fire Ltd at info@whalefire.co.uk or call 0800 772 0738.