Fire and rescue services in England attended 642,264 incidents in the year ending December 2025 — up 6.8% on the year and up around 25% over the decade. This page pulls the UK’s fire and rescue service statistics together in one place: how much work the services do (incidents attended), how big they are (number of services, fire stations and firefighters), and how they are funded. The core data comes from MHCLG’s fire and rescue incident statistics and fire statistics data tables for England, the England fire workforce and pensions statistics, the House of Commons Library on fire services funding, and the annual releases from the Scottish and Welsh services.

It’s written for anyone who needs citable, up-to-date numbers on the state of the fire service — journalists, councillors and fire-governance scrutiny leads, consultants, insurers, and bid writers. Every figure is dated and sourced, and where a topic has its own dedicated page in our statistics cluster we carry a single headline here and link out rather than duplicate it.

Key facts and figures

  • 642,264 incidents were attended by fire and rescue services in England in the year ending December 2025 — up 6.8% on the year.
  • ~49 fire and rescue services cover the UK: 44 in England, three in Wales, and one national service each in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
  • 1,386 fire stations operated in England in 2025, down from 1,439 in 2010.
  • 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters were employed in England at 31 March 2025 — down 14% over the decade.
  • £1.99bn of core spending power is made available to standalone fire and rescue authorities in England for 2026-27, a 4.4% cash rise.
  • 175,918 of the 2025 incidents were fires; 214,184 were non-fire (special-service) incidents — the highest since 2009.
  • 26%–39% is the range by which the NAO found central government funding for fire authorities fell since 2010-11.
  • 38,074 incidents were attended in Wales in 2024-25 — the highest since 2013-14 — while Scotland attended more than 74,000.

All figures are the latest available as of July 2026, and this page is updated when new data is released — MHCLG publishes fire and rescue incident statistics quarterly (the year ending March 2026 release is next), while the workforce, fire-stations (FIRE1404) and local-government finance settlement figures, plus the Scottish and Welsh annual releases, refresh once a year.

How many fire and rescue services are there in the UK?

Emergency fire cover across the UK is provided by around 49 fire and rescue services: 44 in England, three in Wales, and one national service each in Scotland and Northern Ireland (the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service). The count is usually quoted as “around 49” because the English total moves as authorities combine or change governance; MHCLG’s workforce statistics report 44 English services for the year ending March 2025.

The 44 English services sit under a mix of governance models — standalone fire and rescue authorities, county councils, metropolitan authorities, and police, fire and crime commissioners or combined-authority mayors who hold the fire brief. That governance patchwork matters for funding, because only standalone fire and rescue authorities are named separately in the local government finance settlement, which is why the funding headline later on is scoped to them.

Scotland and Wales run differently again: Scotland has operated a single national service since 2013, while Wales retains three regional services (North Wales, Mid and West Wales, and South Wales). Northern Ireland has one service covering the whole region.

How many incidents do UK fire services attend each year?

Fire and rescue services in England attended 642,264 incidents in the year ending December 2025, an increase of 6.8% on the previous year, according to MHCLG’s fire and rescue incident statistics. The longer view is the striking part: incidents are up around 25% over the decade, driven far more by non-fire work than by fires themselves.

The composition of that total tells the story of the modern service:

  • 175,918 fires — up 29% on the previous year, a rise concentrated in a hot, dry outdoor-fire season.
  • 214,184 non-fire incidents — the highest number since the online recording system began in 2009, covering road traffic collisions, flooding and water rescue, medical co-responding, effecting entry, and similar special-service work.
  • 252,162 fire false alarms — virtually unchanged on the year, and still the single largest category of call-out (one headline only; our companion cluster covers false alarms in depth).

The rise of special-service work is the defining trend. In the year ending September 2025, non-fire incidents rose 64% over the decade to 213,472, including 32,623 road traffic collisions and 17,574 flooding and water-rescue incidents — evidence that the modern fire and rescue service is as much a general emergency-response body as a firefighting one. Because there is no single clean national figure for the fire appliance fleet in the official incident releases, this page anchors the estate on the source-verified station count below rather than a fleet total.

Fire counts, casualties and causes are handled separately: fire-related fatalities in England rose to 283 in 266 fatal fires in the year ending December 2025 (up about 10% on the year, though still down 4.7% over the decade) — a single headline here, with the full casualty breakdown on firemarshaltraining’s fire statistics page.

How many fire stations are there in the UK?

England had 1,386 fire stations in 2025, according to MHCLG’s fire statistics data table FIRE1404 — down from 1,439 in 2010, a net loss of 53 stations over 15 years. The estate breaks down into three crewing types:

Station type (England) Number in 2025 What it means
Wholetime 408 Crewed round the clock by full-time firefighters
On-call (retained) 737 Crewed by on-call firefighters who respond from home or work
Other-crewed 241 Day-crewed, mixed or other staffing arrangements
Total 1,386 Down from 1,439 in 2010

On-call stations are the backbone of the estate by number — more than half of all English fire stations rely on retained crews, which is why on-call recruitment and availability are a recurring concern in rural and semi-rural coverage. The overall station count has been broadly stable in recent years after the sharper reductions earlier in the decade, but it sits against a backdrop of falling firefighter numbers, covered next.

How many firefighters are there in the UK?

Fire and rescue services in England employed 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters at 31 March 2025, according to the England fire workforce and pensions statistics — down 0.5% on the year, 4.1% over five years, and 14% over the decade. On a longer horizon the fall is starker still: the National Fire Chiefs Council notes that firefighter numbers in England are down by 25% since 2008, the equivalent of around 11,000 wholetime firefighters, and that services have absorbed the loss of almost £1 billion in capital investment over the same period.

Diversity of the workforce is improving slowly from a low base: 9.7% (3,310) of firefighters in England were women at 31 March 2025, up from 9.3% a year earlier, and 5.6% (1,793) of those who stated their ethnicity were from an ethnic minority background. Those are single headlines here — the detailed workforce, diversity and wholetime-versus-on-call breakdowns live on the dedicated firefighter statistics UK page, and firefighter-assault figures on the attacks on firefighters page.

The headline workforce figure is the FTE count for England only; because the four UK nations publish workforce data on different bases and dates, there is no single clean UK-wide firefighter total, which is why the reliable national anchor is the England FTE figure plus the separate national releases.

How much funding do fire and rescue services get?

The 2026-27 local government finance settlement makes available almost £1.99 billion of core spending power to standalone fire and rescue authorities in England, which the government described as a 4.4% cash increase on 2025-26 (with a guaranteed floor of at least 3.8% for every standalone authority), according to the House of Commons Library. Core spending power is the government’s headline measure of the resources an authority has available, combining central grant, retained business rates and council tax.

That single-year rise sits on top of a long decline. The National Audit Office found that central government funding for fire and rescue authorities in England fell by between 26% and 39% since 2010-11, depending on how the figures are measured — the range that underpins the sector’s “decade of cuts” framing. The National Fire Chiefs Council welcomed the 2026-27 settlement and the multi-year reforms behind it, but warned that the impact of that decade persists in reduced firefighter numbers and lost capital investment.

Two caveats keep the funding picture honest. First, the £1.99bn figure covers only standalone fire and rescue authorities — services funded through county councils, metropolitan authorities or PCC/mayoral budgets are financed through those wider settlements, so the total public spend on fire is larger and harder to isolate. Second, a cash increase is not the same as a real-terms one: once inflation and demand growth are accounted for, a 4.4% cash uplift is a more modest gain in purchasing power.

What about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

The England releases are the richest, but the devolved services publish their own annual statistics. Firefighters in Scotland attended more than 74,000 emergencies in 2024-25 — roughly 6,000 fewer than the previous year — with accidental house fires at a record low of 4,104 (down 26.4% since 2014-15) and 1,069 non-fatal fire casualties, according to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

Fire and rescue authorities in Wales attended 38,074 incidents in 2024-25 — the highest since 2013-14 and a fourth consecutive annual rise — including 10,163 fires, 17,777 false alarms and 1,971 road traffic collisions, according to Welsh Government statistics. The Welsh trend mirrors England’s: total workload rising, pushed up by non-fire and false-alarm activity rather than fires alone.

Nation Incidents attended Data period Note
England 642,264 Year ending Dec 2025 Up 6.8% on the year; ~25% over the decade
Scotland >74,000 2024-25 ~6,000 fewer than the previous year
Wales 38,074 2024-25 Highest since 2013-14; fourth annual rise

Northern Ireland’s single service publishes separately again. Because the four nations use different definitions, boundaries and reporting years, these totals should be read side by side rather than simply summed into one UK figure.

How does workload translate into response on the ground?

More incidents spread across fewer firefighters and a slightly smaller estate has a measurable effect at the sharp end. The average response time to primary fires in England was 9 minutes 23 seconds in the year ending September 2025, 20 seconds slower than the year before — a single headline here, with the full trend and per-service breakdown on our fire service response time statistics page. Related cluster pages cover the services’ wider rescue work (fire service rescue statistics) and their fire-safety audit and enforcement activity (fire safety enforcement statistics).

For employers, the practical takeaway is simple. A service attending record non-fire workload with 14% fewer firefighters than a decade ago is not a reason to lean less on your own arrangements — it is a reason to lean more. The faster and more competent the in-house response, the less depends on the exact minute the first appliance arrives, which is where a trained fire warden team earns its place.

Frequently asked questions

How many fire and rescue services are there in the UK?

Around 49: 44 in England, three in Wales, and one national service each in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The English figure moves as authorities combine or change governance, so “around 49” is the safest overall count.

How many incidents do UK fire services attend each year?

Fire and rescue services in England attended 642,264 incidents in the year ending December 2025, up 6.8% on the year. Scotland attended more than 74,000 in 2024-25 and Wales 38,074, each reported separately.

How many firefighters are there in the UK?

England employed 30,601 full-time-equivalent firefighters at 31 March 2025, down 14% over the decade. There is no single clean UK-wide total because the four nations publish workforce data on different bases; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland report separately.

How much funding do fire and rescue services get?

The 2026-27 local government finance settlement makes almost £1.99 billion of core spending power available to standalone fire and rescue authorities in England, a 4.4% cash increase on 2025-26. The National Audit Office found central government funding for fire authorities fell by between 26% and 39% since 2010-11.

How many fire stations are there in England?

1,386 in 2025 (408 wholetime, 737 on-call and 241 other-crewed), down from 1,439 in 2010, according to MHCLG data table FIRE1404.

Where do UK fire and rescue service statistics come from?

The core data is MHCLG’s fire and rescue incident statistics and fire statistics data tables for England, the England fire workforce and pensions statistics, and the House of Commons Library on funding, plus the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Welsh Government annual releases. England’s incident statistics are quarterly; workforce, stations and funding refresh annually.

If you’re responsible for fire safety at work, these numbers set the context: a busier, leaner fire service means your own preparedness matters more, not less. Our Fire Warden Training course covers evacuation, sweeps, assembly-point management and everyday fire safety checks — £18 per learner, RoSPA approved and CPD accredited, 60 to 90 minutes online, with an instant certificate on passing and bulk discounts from 10 delegates.

Sources & references

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Mark McShane
Mark McShane
Health & Safety Training Specialist, Online CPD Academy

Mark writes about workplace health & safety, fire safety and accredited online training for Fire Warden Training, part of Online CPD Academy.