The Building Standards Division (BSD) of Scottish Government requested that the Building Research Establishment (BRE) scrutinise data, which is held by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS), in order to determine specific fire death events and any correlations relating to external cladding (the data that the SFRS holds comes from its own Incident Recording System).
This report, published in March 2026, builds on a first phase of work which was reported on 09 June 2023 (Fire fatalities beyond the dwelling of fire origin in Scotland - Draft Interim Report).
The study reports on fire fatalities which have occurred in Scotland where the victim has died beyond the dwelling of fire origin. This specifically includes multi storey flats and tenements and whether external wall cladding was recorded as being involved during the fatal fire event.
The study is focused on 75 reports covering 81 fire fatalities. The key findings from the second phase of work are shown below:
- In 80% of these (65 fire fatalities) the room of fire origin was determined to be -the bedroom, kitchen or living room.
- Most fatalities occurred in the bedroom (42%).
- There was only one case of a fire fatality occurring beyond the flat of fire origin; the death resulted from smoke inhalation. The SFRS investigation, concluded that, in their professional opinion, had the occupant been in, and / or remained within their own flat for the entire duration of the fire event and followed SFRS advice to open windows and to ‘stay put’’, this individual would likely not have died. The SFRS personnel further reported that there was no failure of the compartmentation – BRE Global noted the floor of the flat did collapse to the flat below at a later stage of the fire.
- No mention was made by the SFRS, in any of the 75 FI reports, that cladding had either:
- a) been involved in any of these fires, or
- b) contributed to the spread of fire beyond the flat of fire origin, or
- c) contributed to the single fire fatality, beyond the flat of fire origin.
The full report and information contained within, can be found on the Scottish Government website here.
