Thousands of homes “without smoke alarms”

Of all the homes visited by South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue, since 2010 as part of their home safety check service, over 40,000 had never had smoke alarms fitted before.

A further 42,000 homes had smoke alarms, but  were not working properly, either because the battery was flat or had been removed, or because they had been wrongly installed.

Fire safety officers said they feared that despite decades of campaigning on the issue of smoke alarms, thousands more families could be missing out on this life-saving piece of equipment.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue has fitted more than 170,000 free alarms since 2010, plus dozens of specialist alarms for deaf or hard of hearing.