Skip to content

London Fire Brigade

HMICFRS region and HMI

  • His Majesty’s Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services (HMI): Lee Freeman is HMI for the London Fire Brigade
  • HMICFRS region: The service is in HMICFRS’ London and South Central fire region

HMICFRS’s assessment of London Fire Brigade

Our Fire and Rescue Service assessments give you information about how your local fire and rescue service has performed in several important areas. In our latest assessments of London Fire Brigade, we made the following graded judgments:

 

About the service

London Fire Brigade is the busiest fire & rescue service in the country. It is one of the largest firefighting and rescue organisations in the world protecting people and property from fire within the 1,587 square kilometres of Greater London.

It responds to fires and other emergencies but its work has changed over the years, with a stronger emphasis now on fire prevention and community safety.

The brigade has operational staff and a range of non-uniformed and non-operational staff who work behind the scenes to support frontline services, including IT, finance, procurement and community safety officers.

Decisions are made either by the London Fire Commissioner (the statutory fire and rescue authority for Greater London), the Mayor of London or the Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience. A Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee of the London Assembly holds the Commissioner, Mayor and Deputy Mayor to account.

Connect with London Fire Brigade

Key facts – 2022/2023

Service Area

607 square miles

Population

8.87m million people people
up1% local 5 yr change

Workforce (FTE)

100% wholetime firefighters
0% on-call firefighters
0.51 per 1000 population local
0.54 national level
No change local 5 yr change
down4% national 5 yr change

Assets

103 stations
143 fire engines

Incidents

14.1 fire incidents per 1000 population local
10.4 national
5.6 non-fire incidents per 1000 population local
3.5 national
6.7 fire false alarms per 1000 population local
4.3 national

Cost

£34.14 firefighter cost per person per year
£26.96 firefighter cost per person per year (national)