As London Fire Brigade responds to an e-bike or e-scooter fire approximately every 48 hours, a groundbreaking community action project in Newham is calling on the Mayor of London and the London Fire Brigade Commissioner to urgently adopt a London-wide Food
Delivery Safety Charter and invest in community-led fire prevention among the capital’s most vulnerable residents.
The Newham Community Project, working in partnership with the London Borough of Newham and supported by London Fire Brigade, has this week published
new findings from a peer-led intervention that reached delivery riders and international students – groups at the highest risk of e-bike battery fires due to economic pressure, unsafe charging conditions in HMOs, and unregulated conversion kits purchased
online.
The project, which trained rider ambassadors and delivered safety workshops across rider hotspots and universities, distributed over 5,000 #ChargeSafe guidance leaflets and demonstrated measurable behaviour change, including increased use of legitimate chargers,
faster spread of safety messages through rider WhatsApp networks, and more reports of unsafe batteries.
Fire Prompts Community Action
The project was prompted by a devastating fire in Manor Park in October 2022, where ten international students were forced to escape through windows after an e-bike fire in a communal stairwell blocked their exit. Four were injured, three hospitalised, and
all ten required emergency rehousing.
Rozina Iqbal, Director of Operations at Newham Community Project, who led the action research, said:
“We’ve seen the human cost of these fires firsthand – helping riders access emergency accommodation, replace lost documents, and rebuild their lives after losing everything in seconds.
“Our work proves that peer-led education works. Riders aren’t reckless, they’re economically constrained. When trusted voices in their own communities offer practical safety guidance, behaviour changes quickly.
“But Newham can’t solve this alone. Greater Manchester has shown that a Delivery Safety Charter is possible. London doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel – it needs to apply that proven approach here and resource boroughs like ours to roll out this community-led
model across the capital.”
The report highlights that Greater Manchester has already implemented a comprehensive
Food Delivery Charter, while London lacks a coordinated framework despite having one of the largest populations of delivery riders in the country. The research underscores that community engagement is critical to preventing fires before they start. The
project’s action research methodology – using workshop reflections, rider focus groups, and ambassador field notes – showed that peer influence spreads faster than top-down messaging, particularly among economically vulnerable groups working under extreme
time and financial pressure.
