A Birmingham landlord has been landed a huge £25k fine by Birmingham City Council following a host of fire safety offences being discovered at a property under his ownership. Anthony Freeman pleaded guilty to failure to obtain a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO) Licence and numerous breaches of the HMO Management Regulations.

A Crown Court was told that a huge explosion which injured eight staff at a Surrey industrial site, five seriously, including one who was placed in an induced coma and was hospitalised for almost four months, occurred because of a failure to carry out fire risk assessments. The blast was at the Lingfield premises of Ereco EMEA Corporation, where the company recycled printer toner cartridges.

Answers are being demanded on fire safety at Coventry’s University Hospital after a blaze broke out on the site – more than 18 months after a report revealed the hospital was built without proper fire protection. Geoffrey Robinson, MP for Coventry North West, has requested an urgent meeting with the hospital’s chief executive Professor Andy Hardy to find out whether work identified back in 2016 has been carried out.

A hospice has admitted two breaches of fire safety laws after the deaths of three people following a blaze. Patient Rodney Smith, 67, was charged with arson after the fire at St Michael’s Hospice, in East Sussex, but died in jail before his trial.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has reacted to new figures on fires and fire deaths by describing both the rise in fires for the second year running and the rise in fatalities as ‘horrifying’. Fire incidents have increased in England by 9% for the year ending September 2017, having already increased the previous year (2015-2016), amounting to over 170,500 fires.