10-year-high for time it took Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue to respond to emergency incidents

Across the country, the average response time in the year ending to March was nine minutes and 13 seconds — the longest seen since comparable statistics became available. The Fire Brigades Union criticised the Government for not investing enough in the services as “every second counts in a fire”.

In the areas covered by the Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, people had to wait for an average of 10 minutes and 10 seconds for firefighters to respond to incidents. This includes time spent on the phone reporting the incident, the crew’s preparation, and their journey time.

The response time was up on nine minutes and 44 seconds the year before.

The average time it took the service to handle calls was one minute and 32 seconds.

The fire service attended 1,486 primary fires in the year to March, which are the most serious with a threat to life or property. This was 28 more than the year before.

“There are lots of things that impact our response time figures. Last year, for example, we were hit hard by the extreme weather in July and August, which had a huge impact on our statistics,” said Area Manager Andy Macey, the service’s head of emergency response.

“These heatwaves put a lot of pressure on our resources and saw us mobilising crews to incidents further away than normal. Forest and woodland fires are notoriously difficult to locate, too, and this can impact our average response time numbers across the year.

“However, as a service we do welcome the continued spotlight on response times, and we are absolutely committed to learning lessons and improving in this area.

“We have our own ambitious targets which we strive to hit and people across Nottinghamshire should be reassured that if they need us, we will respond as quickly as we possibly can.”

Across England, the number of primary fires saw a 5.1 per cent rise compared to the year before, as the warm dry weather last summer caused more wildfires.

A National Fire Chiefs Council spokesperson said: “In recent years response times across all incident types have been gradually increasing as the range of incident types attended by FRSs has grown and resources have been targeted at higher risks such as fires in the home, where most deaths and injuries from fire occur.

“Attendance times for fires in the home have remained relatively static over the last 10 years.”

There were 588 dwelling fires attended in Nottinghamshire in the year to March and 374 road vehicle fires.

Ben Selby, FBU assistant general secretary said: “Firefighters do everything they can to keep the public safe, but with fewer firefighters, fewer fire stations and fewer fire engines, it is no wonder that response times are deteriorating.”

He added: “Years of brutal government cuts to the fire service are having a clear detrimental impact on public safety.

“Every second counts in a fire. It is about time that the government stopped counting pennies and invested in our fire service to protect people.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The government is committed to ensuring fire services have the resources they need to keep us safe, and overall fire and rescue authorities will receive around £2.6 billion in 2023-24.

“Decisions on how their resources are best deployed to meet their core functions are a matter for each fire and rescue authority.”