Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many operating theatre related fires have been reported in (a) 2020, (b) 2021, (c) 2022 and (d) 2023.

The information is not held in the format requested. Any unexpected or unintended incident which could have or did lead to harm to one or more patients can be recorded on the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, to support local and national learning. This would include surgical fires and burns.

Recording onto LFPSE is a voluntary process, except where reporting to NHS England fulfils duties for other statutory mandatory requirements, such as reporting notifiable incidents to the Care Quality Commission (CQC). NHS England shares all such data with the CQC. Notifiable incidents include events resulting in serious harm or the death of a service user, and therefore the most serious surgical fires or surgical burns are subject to mandatory reporting. However, providers are encouraged to record all patient safety incidents, irrespective of the level of harm, to support local and national learning.