Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many incidents have been reported of lithium batteries (1) exploding, or (2) causing fires, in the past five years.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government collects data on incidents attended by fire and rescue services in England, including information on the cause of the fire and the source of ignition.

This data is published in a range of fire statistics releases, available on GOV.UK at: Fire statistics - GOV.UK (attached).

Our new Fire and Rescue Analysis Platform (FaRDaP) has recently been rolled out, and work is ongoing to update the data it will collect, with data covering lithium-ion batteries role in fire incidents potentially able to be included in the future.

However, the data currently collected does not identify whether incidents attended by fire and rescue services were caused by or involved lithium‑ion battery failures, nor does it record whether a battery exploded. As a result, the Department is unable to provide figures for incidents involving lithium batteries in England over the past five years.