In a single meeting room with ten people, you could easily find forty or more lithium-powered devices in play at any one time, including laptops, phones, smartwatches, tablets, and wireless headsets. Multiply that across an office floor, a school, or a warehouse, and the scale of exposure becomes clear. They’re efficient, rechargeable, and everywhere, which is why lithium-ion battery risk deserves particular attention in fire safety planning.

The number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries has also grown rapidly. According to analysis by insurer QBE, the number of lithium-ion battery fires attended by UK fire services increased 147% over a three-year period, with 1,760 lithium-ion battery fires in 2025 alone – roughly one every five hours*. Yet for many organisations, lithium-ion battery risk still isn’t formally addressed in fire risk assessments, leaving a significant gap in both prevention and emergency response.

• Why lithium-ion batteries present a growing fire risk
• Why these fires behave so differently from traditional fires
• Where the danger typically comes from
• What proactive steps you can take to protect your people, your premises, and your business

Why Lithium-Ion Batteries Are a Growing Fire Risk

Many organisations associate lithium-ion battery fires with electric vehicles or specialist industrial settings. In reality, the risk extends across almost every workplace environment, including:

• Offices and meeting rooms rely on dozens, sometimes hundreds, of laptops, tablets, and mobile devices charging every single day.
• Retail environments depend on payment terminals and stock scanners, as well as e-bike displays for delivery fleets.
• Warehouses and industrial sites use electric pallet trucks and forklifts powered by high-capacity battery systems. When something goes wrong here, conventional fire extinguishers simply aren’t equipped to manage it safely.
• Schools and universities routinely operate charging walls designed to power an entire classroom’s worth of laptops or tablets simultaneously.
• Hospitals and care facilities depend on battery-powered medical devices, monitors, and mobile workstations that are running around the clock.
• Transport hubs, car parks and fleet depots increasingly accommodate electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and battery-powered equipment.

If your business has a laptop charging wall, a stockroom full of handheld scanners, a fleet of electric delivery vehicles, charging pods or even just a bank of desks with phones and laptops charging throughout the day, your organisation is likely to have some level of exposure to lithium-ion battery risk. The scale may differ from one organisation to the next, but the underlying exposure is common to nearly every type of business.

It takes just one faulty charger, one damaged device, or one overworked extension lead in a busy area to create a serious incident.

Here is a selection just from this year:

• London Bridge, April 2026: Four fire engines and around 25 firefighters attended an office block fire caused by a laptop battery failure, forcing roughly 700 people to evacuate an eight-storey building.
• Farringdon, May 2026: Four fire engines and around 25 firefighters tackled a hotel fire caused by a failed lithium battery power bank, damaging part of a third-floor room.
• Ashford, Kent, April 2026: Ten fire engines, a height vehicle, and two bulk water carriers spent two days fighting a recycling centre fire sparked by a single discarded lithium-ion battery.

These incidents illustrate how quickly a single battery failure can escalate into a major incident. They’re a timely reminder that lithium-ion battery fire safety isn’t a box-ticking exercise; it’s an active and growing threat that every business needs to plan for. Beyond the immediate fire risk, battery-related incidents can disrupt operations, damage critical assets and result in significant business interruption.

Public awareness of this risk is growing, and EV fire safety is becoming a bigger part of the national conversation. Incidents involving lithium-ion batteries, from e-bike fires to battery storage incidents in retail settings, are increasingly making headlines, putting pressure on businesses to demonstrate they’ve taken workplace fire safety for lithium-ion batteries seriously.

Why Lithium-Ion Battery Fires Behave Differently

One of the most important things to understand about lithium-ion battery fires is that they don’t behave like conventional fires, and that has real implications for how you prepare and respond.

Traditional fires follow a broadly predictable pattern, but lithium-ion battery fires can defy that logic entirely. The key mechanism at play is thermal runaway, a chain reaction where a single failing battery cell overheats, then triggers neighbouring cells to do the same. This can happen with little or no warning. In some cases, there’s no visible smoke or smouldering beforehand at all; a device can go from fine to fully alight in moments.

Perhaps most concerning is reignition. A lithium-ion battery fire that appears to be extinguished can flare back up, sometimes repeatedly, as thermal runaway continues to spread through remaining cells. This makes containment and monitoring just as important as the initial response.

It’s also critical to know that CO₂ extinguishers (the standard choice in many workplaces) are not effective against lithium-ion battery fires and can make the situation worse. Standard fire-fighting methods and equipment simply weren’t designed for this type of fire. This is why a lithium-ion battery fire extinguisher, tested to recognised standards such as the Dutch NTA 3811, is essential. The Dutch NTA 3811 is currently the only credible benchmark for small lithium-ion battery fires up to 600Wh.

Where the Risks Come From

Understanding why lithium-ion battery fires start is just as important as understanding how they behave. In our experience, the risks generally fall into three categories:

Device issues

• Damaged or swollen battery cells
• Counterfeit or poorly manufactured devices
• Products that haven’t been through verified safety testing, often cheap imports 

Charging issues

• Overcharging devices, particularly overnight
• Damaged charging cables that haven’t been replaced
• Cheap chargers without proper safety cut-outs
• Charging in poorly ventilated areas, where heat has nowhere to go

 Storage issues

• Multiple batteries or devices stored together in close proximity
• E-bikes or scooters charged or stored indoors, often in corridors or near exits
• Cluttered or enclosed charging cupboards with no airflow

Individually, these might seem like minor oversights. Together, across a busy workplace with dozens or hundreds of devices in daily use, they represent a meaningful and largely preventable fire risk.

Reducing the Risk: A Proactive Approach

The good news is that many of the biggest risk factors are entirely within your control, and a proactive, structured approach can significantly reduce your exposure. On the charging side, this means using only official, manufacturer-approved chargers, replacing damaged cables immediately rather than waiting for them to fail, ensuring charging areas are well ventilated, switching off docking stations and chargers at the end of each day, and avoiding overnight charging wherever possible. Storage matters just as much: batteries and devices should be kept away from combustible materials, e-bikes and scooters stored outside main buildings where feasible, and charging areas kept tidy, uncluttered and free from stacked or clustered batteries.

Procurement decisions play a role too. Avoiding cheap, unverified imported devices and chargers, checking that CE marks include a valid notified body number, and purchasing only from reputable, established suppliers all help reduce risk before a device even enters the building. Finally, training and awareness tie everything together. Providing staff with lithium-extinguisher training, arranging fire warden training for key personnel, and running regular awareness sessions ensure that good practice becomes part of everyday culture, not just a one-off policy.

These fundamentals apply across virtually every workplace, regardless of size or sector, and form the foundation of good workplace fire safety for lithium batteries.

Practical Solutions for Managing Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Risk 

Practical solutions to support effective management of lithium-ion battery fire risk include:

• Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Extinguishers: tested to the NTA 3811 standard, suitable for devices up to 600Wh, and fitted with a lance for safe-distance operation. Opt for one with a stand and clear signage, to ensure safety equipment is visible and accessible.
• EV and Industrial Fire Blankets: designed to contain fire spread in car parks, fleet depots, and warehouses by protecting adjacent vehicles and assets.
• Fire risk assessments: tailored to identify lithium-ion battery exposure specific to your premises and operations.
• Training and awareness sessions: equipping your staff to recognise risks early and respond correctly if an incident occurs.
• Ongoing support and compliance guidance: helping you stay ahead of an evolving risk category.

Emergency Response & Staying Prepared

Even with the best prevention measures in place, it’s essential that staff know how to respond if something does go wrong.

Call 999 immed

iately if a device is smoking, swelling, or hissing, if flames are visible, or if an EV, e-bike, or scooter is involved in a fire and never attempt to move or handle a burning device yourself.

Having the right equipment, procedures and training in place is crucial. Understanding the risks, implementing sensible charging and storage controls, adopting appropriate fire safety measures and ensuring staff are properly trained can significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of an incident.

As lithium-ion ba

ttery use continues to grow, proactive fire safety planning will become an essential part of protecting people, property and business continuity.

Managing Lithium-Ion Battery Risk with Chubb

• Book a lithium fire risk assessment with our team

• Explore
  our range of lithium-ion battery fire safety solutions

Visit: Fire Extinguishers – Chubb Fire & Security : UK – EN 

* Source: QBE analysis of Freedom of Information responses from 42 of the UK’s 49 fire and rescue services, reported by the International Fire & Safety Journal in May 2026. The analysis found UK fire services attended approximately 1,760 lithium-ion battery fires in 2025, a 147% increase compared with 2022.