Why do fire services have shorter response times compared to...

[flamingmad]

I was just wondering why in many cases the Fire Service have a faster response time to incidents compared to the ambulance service?

[AnthonyB]

Less jobs. In many ambulance services resources are working from signing until the end of or beyond, of their shift.
As a result, despite not staying on station & being placed at standby points in some areas, the nearest resource to an incident won't be there - it will be at something else already.
Most ambulance trusts will have more 999 jobs in a couple of days than their local fire service will have in a month or longer.
Also resources are stretched further by inappropriate calls, an analogy to the types of call would be if your station got loads of 999's to stub someones cigarette out.

Ask your question at the forum at www.ambulance999.co.uk for a variety of reasons based on region

[Mike Buckley]

The more practical reason is that historically the Fire Service had its response times laid down by the "Standards of Fire Cover". Under these areas within a brigade had a risk catagory and the brigade had to achieve an attendance within a specified time for the risk catagory. For example an "A" risk area had time limits of 2 pumps within 5 minutes of the call and a third within 8 minutes. The "A" risk catagory covered major city centres or concentrations of high risk industrial or commercial premises.  The "C" risk areas were the suburbs and small towns and needed one pump within 10 minutes and the rest of the country was "D" risk that needed one pump within 20 minutes. There were two other catagories Remote Rural which were places like the Yorkshire moors and special risks which were particular sites that needed a special attendance above that of the area risk. There was a gloriously complicated formula for calculating what the risk an area was, which I am sure at times was manipulated to make sure that a Brigade had at least one area of A risk. The type and size of fire stations were then determined to ensure that the attendance times could be achieved.

The Fire Service was the only emergency service at the time that had these standards, neither the police or the ambulance service had a legal duty to attend within any time frame.

As I said this is historical as the fire system has changed.

[Firewolf]

The Fire Brigade is the least busiest resource of all the three emergency services.

I was speaking to a Paramedic yesterday - he enlightened me on a number of shocking facts. You wouldn't believe the amount of ridiculous calls Ambulance Control gets on the 999 system which ties up valuable resources. Infact many are that bizzare, bewildering or down right ridiculous that he is going to write a book about them when he retires!!

Its a similar story with the Police. They get tied up with not only silly call outs but also red tape.

So in many cases the Fire Service are normally the first on scene at multi service incidents and in general hit their response targets approximately 99% of the time.

This is changing however. With modernisation many brigades are now dispatching resources that would traditionally cover one set station area (and neighbouring station areas) to the other side of their respective county - which can be miles away!

This is all well and good when they are utilised as "back up" appliances but if they are sent as the first appliance to an incident miles away they will never hit response times! And lives could be endangered too!.