What are you doing to highlight and protect Londoners from the fire risks posed by e-scooters?

Whilst e‑scooters have the potential to provide Londoners with a new form of transport that can reduce road congestion and make London a greener city, private e‑scooters remain illegal on our roads, cycle lanes and footways. In London, TfL is currently undertaking the UK’s largest trial of e‑scooters, using scooters that are subject to rigorous safety measures. This is the only legal way of riding e‑scooters in public in our city. TfL is carefully assessing the impacts of the trial to ensure this new way of travelling is inclusive of everyone’s needs and is safe for Londoners.

Over the past year, the LFB has seen an increase in the number of fires it has attended involving lithium-ion batteries associated with what they class as electrically powered personal vehicles, or EPPVs, as many as 70 in a 12-month period. The LFB issued safety advice over the safe use of lithium-ion batteries following these incidents and there is also information available on the Brigade’s website to advise people on how best to keep themselves safe.

Following an incident in November last year [2021] involving a folded, privately owned e‑scooter catching fire on a London Underground train at Parsons Green station, TfL launched an urgent review into the use of e‑scooters on London’s transport network. The review was supported by evidence from the LFB’s fire safety experts. As a result of the review, TfL announced a ban on all privately owned e‑scooters on its network, which came into force on 13 December 2021 and the decision was fully supported by the LFB.

Many Londoners will be unaware when they think about buying an e‑scooters that it is not legal to ride them anywhere in the public realm. In the run-up to Christmas, the MPS and my Walking and Cycling Commissioner, [Dr] Will Norman, wrote to retailers, reminding them of their responsibility to make customers aware of the legal status of private e‑scooters and their use in public spaces. This issue is a good example of GLA functional bodies working together to identify concerns and take action to help keep Londoners safe, and the LFB Fire Safety Team is continuing to review the fire risks posed by private e‑scooters as more information becomes available.

There is growing evidence that e‑scooters are not just posing a significant fire risk on roads and pavements but also in our homes, and last year the LFB attended 50 fires involving e‑scooters and e-bikes. Last week, we saw a fire in Willesden caused by a charging e‑scooter, which resulted in a small bedroom flat being destroyed. Will you work with the LFB to ensure a section on e‑scooters is included on the electrical safety section of the website and that it is promoted through your channels?

Chair, I have not recently gone to the electrical section of the LFB website, but I will promise to do so, and she makes a really good idea. Why do I not ask my Deputy Mayor [for Fire and Resilience] to speak to Hina to see what other advice she has got? This is an area we could all work in together because it is about public education and you have got lots of constituents who respect what you say, and you can help us in relation to being a message carrier. Let us do that.

Absolutely. I also would think that it would be helpful to have a wider publicity campaign around fire risks posed by e‑scooters, not least because the building safety scandal has unearthed hundreds of residential buildings in London with serious fire safety defects, which makes the risks posed even more worrying. As the Mayor, will you be working together with boroughs, the LFB and housing associations on a publicity campaign to highlight the serious risks posed, emphasising not only the importance of fire safety but of safety around batteries?

Chair, the Member raises a really important point and, as she was speaking, the potential opportunities just occurred to me to get into people’s homes with information that may help keep them safer. They may have an e‑scooter in their home and not realise the danger it poses. Chair, let me take that way. We are doing great work as the GLA group. Question: are we doing enough with the housing associations, the smaller ones and the bigger ones? We are doing good work with the councils but let me go away and just kick the tyres to see what more we can be doing. Why do I not also ask the Deputy Mayors Tom Copley [for Housing and Residential Development] and [Dr] Fiona Twycross [for Fire and Resilience] to touch base with the Member to see if there are any other ideas she has got about how we can reach those Londoners that we have historically found it difficult to reach? Some of them may own an e‑scooter. It is about common-sense things that can be done to keep them and their families safe.

I have also got another idea. I am also worried about the workplace and many people use e‑scooters to get to work. They are putting them into basements and discrete areas into the buildings and this could also be a fire risk, especially if they are left there overnight. Will you commit to working with the LFB and boroughs to ensure that all employers in London are made aware of the fire risks posted by e‑scooters and what they can do to mitigate those risks?

Well, again, Chair, it is another example. TfL and City Hall have done some good work, but I cannot give you a guarantee we have done that work with employers in the private sector and so forth. Again, I will make sure the questions that Hina has asked are circulated to my team to make sure that it gives the challenge we need to be asking these questions because you are right. Somebody may use an e-scooter to legally get to their place of work, but the issue is it may be a fire risk, so is the work taking the right steps? Similarly, Chair, why do I not ask Jules Pipe [CBE, Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Skills] to make sure our planning is in the right place? We have done lots of good work to make sure there is cycling parking in new developments. Question: have we made sure we are raising the awareness about people who may park their e‑scooter in a new development? Can I take that away, Chair, to just kick the tyres to make sure we have thought about it? This is a developing area, there are things we have probably not thought of and, again, this sort of challenge is good.

I look forward to hearing from all the Deputy Mayors on this. Thank you so much.