North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue record slowest response times in the Country
The findings are based on data from the Home Office
There's criticism of North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue as new data reveals it has the slowest response times in the Country.
Personal injury experts at Claims.co.uk analysed data from the Home Office to find the total firefighter response times in each area of the UK for the quarter ending in September 2023. The average of the call handling times, crew turnout times, and drive times for all types of fires were calculated to determine the final response time and the ranking.
North Yorkshire was revealed to have the slowest firefighter response time, at 12 minutes and 37 seconds for 1,720 fires. North Yorkshire also had the slowest drive times for all fire types at an average of 10 minutes and 44 seconds.
What do North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue say?
Area Manager Damian Henderson Director of Service Improvement and Assurance said: “Response times are affected by things such as traffic and how close an incident is to the fire station. We cover one of the largest geographical areas of the ‘predominately rural fire and rescue services’ and have a similar number of fire stations as the other predominately rural services who cover much smaller areas. This means incidents in the more rural areas significantly impact our average response times due to the time taken to reach them from their nearest fire station. Many of our stations are crewed by On-call firefighters who respond to the fire station from their workplace or home to attend incidents.
“I would like to offer reassurance that we always attend incidents as quickly as possible and we are within 3 seconds of the average response time for predominantly rural fire services to dwelling fires. As part of our response principles we review the primary fires we attend, where the average response times are above the average for predominantly rural services. This allows us to make proposals for improvement, where we can. We are also focusing on providing extra prevention work in the more rural areas of North Yorkshire."