In the summer of this year Leeds saw itself in National headlines for riots encapsulated by multiple arson attacks including a burning double-decker bus.
Since lockdown Leeds has seen a concerning number of deliberate fires each year with numbers similar or more than areas such as Greater London and Merseyside.
Through this financial year there have been over 1200 recorded deliberate fires according to datamillnorth.
According to West Yorkshire Fire Service statistics already this financial year there have been 1056 secondary deliberate fires and 334 primary deliberate fires.
A secondary fire is classed as outdoor and usually have no human involvement, whilst primary are much larger and often involve some form of habitable building, vehicle or outdoor public space.
As there is still over three months of the financial year left it is expected that these numbers will continue to increase and possibly exceed those of the past few years apart from 2022/23 which was seen as an anomaly due to the heatwave in the summer.
Leeds District Commander for West Yorkshire Fire Service, Lee Miller said: “I think part of it is fly-tipping and people burning rubbish instead of paying to get rid of things.
“There is also an element of serious organised crime within those areas, so when you start looking at vehicle related crime and targeted arson the properties against properties or vehicles.
“You do see increases in those areas because there is elements of gang activity, urban street gangs or serious organised crime they do all bring in arson.”
This includes over 80 in the Armley and Wetherby wards.
Lee Miller said: “We’ve been doing work with a young offenders institute in Wealstun and we’ve been doing a lot of work with prison strategies and basically they can’t take their vapes off them and they’re setting really small fires but they’re going on as arson stats so that’s a massive increase for all cities.
“In Armley we know there’s a group of young people that are causing issues so we work really closely with the Anti-Social Behaviour Team for Leeds City Council and West Yorkshire Police.
“There’s been some success, but they seem to be back out causing problems again, so it’s a matter of just building partnerships with those.”
Whilst there has been attempts the prevent the issue there has been no real decrease.
The riots in Harehills earlier this year highlighted the high rise in arson cases.
Lee Miller said: “We try to improve the wards and it’s a real focused intervention around police, local authority, multi-agency response to try and make the whole ward a better and a safer place in terms of disruptive action to begin with to try and reduce crime.
“But then the build bit is making that community a better place for everyone that we’ve done quite a lot of work with like Youth Club Service our youth intervention team who are doing some projects in the next couple of months in the new year to go to schools and get safety messages across.”
The council did not comment on what their plans are for dealing with this issue. However, the council plan to move forward their Safety Strategy for 2024-2027 which plans to tackle all anti-social behaviour including arson.
