Most fire brigades ‘too slow’ to answer call-outs

Only 45% of fires attended within critical first 10 minutes

Fire brigade response times are lagging far behind best practice with fewer than half of fires attended to within the critical first 10 minutes.

Firemen say they should ideally be on scene within four minutes but, across all 29 local authorities surveyed last year, only an average of 45% of fires were attended within 10 minutes and 13% took longer than 20 minutes.