Fire chiefs respond to study finding service has sixth slowest firefighter response time in the UK

It comes after a new study found the West Midlands has the third fastest firefighter response time in the UK but Staffordshire has the sixth slowest.

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 three months leading up to September 2023.

The average of the call handling times, crew turnout times, and drive times for all types of fires was calculated to determine the final response time and the ranking.

Tyne and Wear took the top spot for fastest firefighter response time in the UK with an average response time of six minutes and 53 seconds.

However, on the other end of the scale North Yorkshire was revealed to have the slowest firefighter response time, at 12 minutes and 37 seconds for 1,720 fires.

Staffordshire had the sixth slowest average firefighter response time at 11 minutes and 28 seconds, putting it 38th in the list of 43 regions.

However, bosses said the average attendance time across Staffordshire in January was eight minutes and 39 seconds.

A spokesman for Staffordshire Fire & Rescue Service said: "Staffordshire is a diverse county with a mixture of urban and rural areas that require different levels of target response times and risk management to incidents.

"Large parts of the county are serviced by on-call firefighter who have a five-minute response time to their stations before continuing to an incident.

"In January, our average attendance time across Staffordshire was eight minutes and 39 seconds, with an achievement rate of 86 per cent.

"Since November last year, our attendance achievement rate has been increasing month-on-month, as well as our average response time to all types of incidents.

"This is despite the total number of incidents in Staffordshire increasing in January.

"We know how important it is to get to people in their time of need as quickly as possible.

"We want to continue meeting our targets in this area, assessing risk effectively and doing all we can to protect people across Staffordshire."

West Midlands ranked third, with a total response time of seven minutes and 19 seconds.

The area experienced 6,142 fires in total and the West Midlands also had the second-highest average drive time in the UK for dwelling-related fires at four minutes and 14 seconds.

Data from the Home Office for the quarter ending September 2023 was used to obtain the average call handling times, drive times, and crew turnout times for fire types including primary, dwellings, other buildings, other outdoors and road vehicles.

The average of the times for each response time and fire type was calculated to determine the ranking.