More people are being injured in fires, with Cambridgeshire Fire & Rescue Service saying a 42 per cent rise may be down to out-of-control bonfires.

In a report of the service’s integrated risks management plan (IRMP) for the third quarter of 2018/19, the service says this rise may be down to people being injured by bonfires becoming out of control.

“There has been a 42.5 per cent increase in fire casualties in the year to date compared to the same period last year,” the report states.

“There have been 57 fire casualties in the year to date compared to 40 fire casualties in the same period last year. This rise is attributed to minor injuries related to bonfires going out of control.”

The report, which will go before Cambridgeshire County Council’s overview and scrutiny committee on January 10, also says fire deaths are up by 50 per cent compared to the same period a year ago.

The increase, however, is very small in terms of actual numbers having only increased by one.

“We have had three fire fatalities recorded so far this year,” the report says “We have had one fire fatality recorded in the first quarter data (the incident happened in January but we were only notified in May).

“The second fatality occurred in October and the third was in November; we are awaiting the coroner’s report to verify if this was fire related.”

According to the report, the number of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents also went up by more than 37 per cent.

The report says the number of people killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions has increased by nine compared to the same period 12 months previously.

However, the report notes that the data available only goes up to April 2018.

In general, the fire service is being called out to more fires.

The report says: “We have seen 1,788 fires over the last three quarters compared to 1,711 over the same period last year.

“We saw an increase in secondary fires, largely fires in the open during the summer period.

“Which created a seven per cent increase at the second quarter but we can see here that the numbers of fires has reduced and we have closed the gap on the measure for the same period the previous year to 4.5 per cent.”