Oxfordshire: Fire service response times slower than average

People living in the county had to wait an average of 11 minutes and 10 seconds for firefighters to attend, compared to nine minutes and 13 seconds nationally.

This comes as Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue said there was no evidence that low traffic neighbourhoods were to blame.

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The average of 11 minutes and 10 seconds includes time spent on the phone reporting the incident, the crew’s preparation, and their journey time.

The figures are up on 10 minutes and 35 seconds the year before.

A spokesperson for Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue said: “Each fire and rescue service set their response standards based on risk and emergency scenarios for the areas they cover, and this is likely to be different between urban metropolitan, and a mainly rural county like Oxfordshire.

“We provide full details in our Community Risk Management Plan.

 “Our response standards are to attend 80 per cent of incidents in 11 minutes and 95 per cent of incidents in 14 minutes, and these are targets we meet.

“There is no evidence that the introduction of LTNs has adversely affected this.”

Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue ranked 37th out of the 44 fire services in England for response times.

The average time it took the service to handle calls was one minute and 24 seconds.

The fire service attended 723 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.

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 spokesman 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 250 house fires attended in Oxfordshire in the year to March and 174 road vehicle fires.

Ben Selby assistant general secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, 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.

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“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 spokesman 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.”