A staggering three-quarters of business premises given safety checks by West Yorkshire fire officers were found to be unsatisfactory in the latest audit to be carried out – the worst record in England.

An analysis of Government statistics for fire and rescue authorities shows that 75.3% of shops, offices and other premises visited and audited in 2013/14 by West Yorkshire fire officers were unsatisfactory.

But fire chiefs insist the way in which they prioritise the checks mean that the premises posing a higher risk are given more attention.

The brigade’s officers carried out 1,802 fire safety audits of non-domestic premises in 2013/14 with just 445 found to be satisfactory with 1,357 found to be unsatisfactory.

The England average was just over one-in-three, (35.5%), unsatisfactory. The 75.3% figure is an improvement on the 88.8% of premises found to be unsatisfactory in 2012/13.

Nationally there were 71 prosecutions in England for failing to comply with fire safety regulations in 2013/14.

Four of these related to schools, 14 to shops and 13 to licensed premises such as pubs and clubs. This is up from 58 prosecutions in 2012/13.

Chris Kemp, West Yorkshire’s senior fire protection manager, advised caution in interpreting the statistics.

He said: “Inspectors from West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service carry out audits of non-domestic premises within West Yorkshire. In order to prioritise these inspections we use a Risk Based Inspection Programme (RBIP) that allows us to target those premises which we consider pose a higher risk to occupants.

“Through the development of our RBIP we are able to ensure that premises which are compliant are less likely to receive a visit from a specialist fire safety inspector as this causes unwanted burden on the business and ties our inspectors up when they could be dealing with premises which present a significant risk.

“Due to this effective targeting the majority of our inspections result in an unsatisfactory outcome which in itself shows that we are targeting the correct premises and making West Yorkshire safer”.