In short
London Fire Brigade recorded 206 e-bike and e-scooter fires in London in 2025 — around 17 a month, with two deaths. E-bikes accounted for roughly 83% of them. The recurring factors are conversion kits, non-original chargers, and charging in escape routes or while unattended.
E-mobility batteries are where UK lithium battery fire risk actually concentrates. If your premises handles e-bikes or e-scooters — a bike shop, a delivery fleet, a housing block, a hotel with guest bikes, a council depot — this is the page that matters most.
The figures
206
e-bike and e-scooter fires in London during 2025, an average of 17 a month. 171 of them — around 83% — involved an e-bike. Two people died.
Source: London Fire Brigade, 28 January 2026.
211
e-bike and e-scooter fires recorded across the UK in 2024, with 86 injuries and 8 deaths. 175 of the 211 notifications came from London Fire Brigade.
Source: Office for Product Safety and Standards, via the Department for Business and Trade, 21 July 2025.
A note on using these numbers. They cover different geographies and different years, so they cannot be subtracted from one another to produce a “rest of the UK” figure. And because 175 of the 211 UK notifications for 2024 came from a single brigade, the national total should be read as a lower bound on incidents rather than a count of them. If you need a figure for a board paper, quote the London series — it is the most consistent record available — and say so explicitly.
The pattern behind the numbers
Conversion kits
A conversion kit turns an ordinary bicycle into an e-bike using components bought separately. Cells, battery management system, charger and controller were often never designed or tested together, and the assembly may have been done without any electrical competence. This combination appears repeatedly in fire service commentary on serious incidents. For an employer, the practical control is simple and effective: converted bikes are not permitted on site or in company use.
Chargers
Replacement chargers bought from online marketplaces may deliver the wrong voltage or current profile, or lack the protection features of the original. Electrical Safety First has published extensively on substandard chargers reaching UK consumers. The control: an approved charger list, original equipment only, and no charging with a lead of unknown origin.
Where charging happens
An e-bike is bulky, so it gets charged wherever it fits: a hallway, a stairwell landing, next to a flat entrance door, inside a shop overnight. Those are exactly the locations where a fire does the most harm, because they are on the escape route. Moving charging away from escape routes and sleeping accommodation changes the consequence of a failure more than any product does.
What duty holders can actually do
| Setting | The main exposure | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Housing association or block manager | Resident charging in flats, hallways and stairwells; no control over what residents buy | A written policy on charging locations, communication rather than prohibition alone, and provision of a suitable external or separated charging point where practicable. The Fire Safety Act 2021 is relevant to the assessment scope. |
| Bike shop or repair garage | Many packs on charge, customer packs of unknown history, damaged packs awaiting assessment | Separate charging area away from the shop floor and exits; a defined quarantine point for customer packs that arrive damaged; no charging of packs you have not inspected. |
| Delivery or courier fleet | High charge cycle counts, riders charging at home, conversion kits, packs in vehicles | Company-supplied packs and chargers only; a supervised charging location at the depot; a rule that damaged packs are exchanged rather than repaired. |
| Hotel or leisure | Guest e-bikes charged in bedrooms or corridors; sleeping accommodation on site | A designated charging location away from bedrooms, stated at check-in; a clear prohibition on in-room charging, backed by somewhere better to do it. |
| School or college | Staff and pupil e-scooters, storage during the day, uncontrolled procurement | A single designated storage and charging point, away from exits and teaching spaces; no in-building charging of personal devices. |
The through-line is that a prohibition without an alternative tends to push charging somewhere less supervised. Providing a designated location that is convenient enough to use is usually the stronger control.
Frequently asked questions
How many e-bike fires are there in the UK each year?
The most consistent record is London Fire Brigade’s: 206 e-bike and e-scooter fires in London in 2025, of which around 83% involved an e-bike. For the UK as a whole, OPSS recorded 211 e-bike and e-scooter fires in 2024 with 86 injuries and 8 deaths — but 175 of those notifications came from London alone, so the national figure is best treated as incomplete rather than as a total.
Can we ban residents from charging e-bikes in their flats?
Whether you can depends on your tenancy or lease terms, and it is worth taking advice rather than assuming. Practically, a prohibition works only where there is a usable alternative — otherwise charging continues out of sight. Most landlords who have addressed this seriously have combined a stated policy with a provided charging location and active communication, and have recorded the reasoning in the fire risk assessment.
Are e-scooters as much of a risk as e-bikes?
They appear in the same incident category and share the same failure mode, but in the London 2025 data e-bikes accounted for the large majority — 171 of 206 fires. E-scooter packs are typically smaller, which reduces the energy released, though they are just as exposed to substandard chargers and physical damage. Treat both under the same policy rather than distinguishing between them.