Bonfire season, and the waste left beside your buildings

The latest fire figures for England show a sharp rise in the fires that start outside. In the year to March 2026, fire and rescue services attended 170,597 fires, up 19% on the year before. Secondary fires, the category that covers refuse, grass and other small outdoor fires, rose to 102,549, up 30% from 79,121.

Most of those fires never reach a building. The ones that do usually start in the same few places: a wheelie bin pushed against a wall, a bin store with the door wedged open, a skip under a window, or a pile of dumped mattresses and boxes beside the entrance. For anyone managing blocks, the bin store is where a refuse fire becomes a building fire.

Why the next four weeks matter

Many fire and rescue services run arson reduction campaigns in the run up to 5 November, asking residents and landlords to clear rubbish and move bins away from buildings. The clocks go back on 25 October, so by bonfire night the bin store is in darkness from late afternoon.

It is also when rubbish builds up. Fly-tipping in England reached 1.26 million incidents in 2024/25, up 9% on the year before, and household waste made up 62% of them. Those figures cover land councils clear. Most fly-tipping on private land, which includes the service yards and car parks behind a lot of residential blocks, is not counted at all, and it is the managing agent who pays to remove it.

What the fire risk assessment should already say

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the responsible person has to take general fire precautions, and a suitable fire risk assessment looks at arson as well as accidental fire. In practice that means asking where combustible waste is kept, how close it is to the building, whether it can be reached by someone passing, and what happens if it catches.

Good assessments for residential blocks usually come back to the same points:

• Bins and bulk waste kept well away from walls, windows, doors and eaves, ideally in an enclosed store that is locked or secured.
• Bin store doors that close and latch, with lighting that works after dark.
• No storage of waste or bulky items in escape routes, stair cores or under stairs.
• A clear plan for removing dumped items quickly, rather than waiting for the next scheduled collection.
• Skips on site for works placed away from the building and emptied or covered out of hours.

If your assessment lists these as actions and nobody can say when they were last checked, that is the gap.

Where it usually goes wrong

The fire risk assessor writes the action. The cleaner or caretaker sees the problem. The waste contractor empties the bins on their own schedule. Nobody owns the bit in between, which is noticing that the bulk waste has been sitting by the door for nine days and getting it moved.

The other gap is evidence. If there is a fire in a bin store, the insurer and the fire service will want to know how often the store was checked, what was found, and how quickly dumped waste was cleared. A caretaker's memory is not a record. Neither is a WhatsApp photo nobody filed.

There is also a waste duty. Under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, anyone who produces or handles commercial waste has a duty of care to make sure it goes to an authorised carrier. When a managing agent clears fly-tipping from a site, the transfer note belongs with the building's records.

What to do this month

Before 5 November, walk every bin store and service yard you are responsible for. Note where bins sit relative to walls and openings, whether the store secures and the light works, and whether anything has been dumped. Move bins that are against the building. Book a clear-out of bulk waste so the site goes into bonfire night empty. Then put a short weekly check on the calendar for the bin stores through to the new year, with a named person and somewhere to record what they found.

Where SAMRISK puts it

SAMRISK holds the building and the land it sits on across thirty connected systems, twenty for the building and ten for the land.

Arson and combustible waste sit in the building's risk assessments and in site risks for the yards and car parks around it, with the bin stores marked on the building plans so each check has a location. The weekly walk round goes on the compliance calendar with an owner and a pass or fail history. Dumped waste or a broken store door raises a maintenance job, a bin fire is logged as an incident, and waste transfer notes and contractor reports are filed in documents.

Sources: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Detailed analysis of fires and response times to fires attended by fire and rescue services, England, year ending March 2026, published August 2026; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Fly-tipping statistics for England, 2024 to 2025; Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005; Environmental Protection Act 1990, section 34.