On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 20:37:57 +0100, Martin Angove wrote:

http://www.niceic.org.uk/consumers/moving.html

says:

According to Government figures, around 10% of domestic fires are
electrical, and of these, a third are directly due to old or bad wiring.
This equates to over 2,000 electric shock accidents and 9,300 electrical
fires in homes every year.

So if a third of 10% of house fires is 9,300, that would mean 279,000 house
fires in total each year.
According to
http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_fire/documents/downloadable/odpm_fire_028259.pdf
in 2002 there were 65,000 dwelling fires overall. 2,773 caused by
electrical distribution. So the 1/3 of 10% is in the right ballpark, but
not the numbers.