Do Response Times Matter?

Back in 2019, I set out to explore the relationship between how quickly fire and rescue services respond to incidents, and how that affects outcomes. Fast forward to 2025, and that question feels even more pressing.

Average response times have continued to rise across England, particularly in the past two to three years. Meanwhile, services face growing pressure, not only from constrained budgets, but from increasing operational complexity, stretched crewing models, and rising public expectation. So, the question stands: how much does response time actually influence the outcome of an incident?

This new piece of analysis returns to the question with fresh data and a more refined approach. Using ten years of incident-level data from 2014 to 2024, I explore the trends in response times and incident outcomes across three key incident types:

• Accidental Dwelling Fires (ADFs)

• Other Building Fires (OBFs)

• Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs)

Some of the outcomes are expected, others might be more surprising, such as the falling rate of evacuations with longer response times to other building fires.

I hope this work not only sparks debate but contributes to strategic planning and service improvement. If your service is considering how to interpret or act on the findings shared here, or how to explore your own data in more detail, I’d be pleased to help.