PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Smoke Alarms: Hearing Impaired (9 February 2016)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to ensure that local fire authorities install deaf awareness alternative smoke alarms in homes which make use of warning lights rather than sound as a warning system when requested.

Asked by:
Mark Pritchard (Conservative)

We expect local fire and rescue authorities to determine how to allocate their resources to best protect their communities from the risks from fire. Although each authority delivers a range of community fire safety interventions designed to prevent and reduce the risk from accidental dwelling fires, all also carry out a programme of home fire safety visits. In some cases, these visits, which offered tailored fire safety advice in the home, are focussed specifically on those who may be particularly vulnerable, including older people and those with disabilities. Fire and rescue authorities will, in certain circumstances, offer to provide and install free smoke alarms to households without them. This will include alarms designed specifically for those who may be deaf or have other hearing difficulties. How fire and rescue authorities decide where best to target their home fire safety visits and what fire safety equipment, if any, would reduce most effectively the risk to the household is a local matter based on a local assessment of risk.

Answered by:
Sir Mike Penning (Conservative)
19 February 2016