London, UK — A newly released open dataset from RiskFire reveals that fire safety enforcement activity differs by as much as thirteenfold depending on which London borough a property is located in.
The London Fire Safety Index compiles fire incident reports, safety audit figures, enforcement notice counts, and average emergency response times across all 33 of the capital’s boroughs into one easily navigable resource. Sourced from London Fire Brigade records available via the London Datastore and licensed under the Open Government Licence, the index is freely accessible for searching, downloading, or embedding.
Over the most recent twelve-month period, London Fire Brigade performed 7,049 safety audits citywide and handed out 727 enforcement notices—a citywide average of 11.1 notices for every hundred audits. Yet this average masks a significant divide. In Ealing, 23.7% of audits resulted in a notice, making a premises there thirteen times more likely to face enforcement action than one in Bexley, where the figure stands at just 1.8%. Brent (21.8%) and Harrow (20.9%) also rank high, while Bromley (3.8%), Newham (4.1%), and Southwark (5.2%) are near the lower end of the scale.
There is also little alignment between how often boroughs audit and how many fires they actually see. Haringey logged 483 fires alongside just 89 audits, whereas neighbouring Islington recorded 387 fires with 387 audits—a fivefold gap in audit frequency between two adjacent north London areas.
Emergency response times also vary widely, with nearly two minutes separating the fastest and slowest boroughs. The capital’s average response stands at five minutes 31 seconds. Lambeth manages an average of four minutes 36 seconds, while crews in Hillingdon take six minutes 25 seconds—39% longer. This discrepancy appears largely geographic, as all five of the slowest boroughs are situated in outer London.
The Index is paired with a separate cladding remediation tracker built using data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Building Safety Remediation programme. Nine years on from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the average completion rate across 66 English local authorities is just 36.2%. Of the 29 London authorities included, 24 have completed less than half of their remediation work. Hillingdon has finished 16.1%, while Stoke-on-Trent nationally has yet to complete any.
“A landlord in Ealing and a landlord in Bexley are under exactly the same legal duty, but the chance of that duty ever being tested looks very different depending on which side of a boundary the building sits. That doesn’t change what the law requires — it just means a lot of people are relying on not being asked. We published this because the information existed, it just wasn’t in a form anyone outside the industry could use,” said a spokesperson of RiskFire.
The release of this information comes as legal obligations on building owners have expanded considerably. Since October 2023, Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 has eliminated the five-employee threshold previously required for recording a fire risk assessment, extending these duties to a much larger pool of small landlords, HMO operators, and small business owners. Up to now, borough-by-borough details on where enforcement activity is concentrated have not been easily accessible to these groups.
“None of this data is new — it’s all published by London Fire Brigade and MHCLG. What was missing was a way to see your own borough without downloading three spreadsheets and knowing which columns to join. We’ve put it in one place, made it free to download and free to embed, because the people who most need it are small landlords and building managers who were never the intended audience for a statistical release,” RiskFire’s spokesperson added.
Both datasets are available for full download in CSV or JSON formats, and any website publisher can embed the borough-level charts at no cost.
Two important limitations should be noted. Enforcement rates are influenced by both genuine compliance levels and each borough’s specific enforcement strategy—the data cannot distinguish between these factors, so a high rate does not automatically indicate a worse borough. Response times are heavily influenced by geography, with the five slowest boroughs all being larger outer London areas. Additionally, cladding figures are derived from banded building counts as published by MHCLG and should be treated as approximate.
Data sources: London Fire Brigade via the London Datastore for fire-related figures (as of 1 June 2026) and MHCLG Building Safety Remediation monthly data for cladding (as of 31 May 2026). RiskFire consolidates and presents this data but does not collect it.
About RiskFire
RiskFire offers complimentary fire safety compliance guidance for landlords, letting agents, property managers, and business owners, addressing obligations under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 across 17 different property categories. The organisation also links property owners with accredited third-party fire risk assessors.
Quick Notes:
- Free reuse. All statistics are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Charts on any borough page are free to embed. Both datasets are downloadable in full as CSV or JSON with no registration required.
- Borough-level detail. Dedicated pages for each of the 33 London boroughs can be searched using a borough name or postcode.
- Interviews. Ray Ansel, a BAFE SP205 and NFRAR registered fire risk assessor, is available to discuss fire risk assessment practices, competency standards, and the real-world impact of the Fire Safety Act 2021 and Building Safety Act 2022 on landlords and small enterprises.
- Updates. Both trackers are updated regularly as new source data becomes available—monthly in the case of cladding remediation.
Find out more at https://riskfire.org.uk/
For enquiries, contact hello@riskfire.org.uk
Media Contact
Company Name: RiskFire.org
Contact Person: Media Relations
(E) mail: hello@riskfire.org.uk
Website: https://riskfire.org.uk/
City: London
Country: United Kingdom
