The truth about Fire Brigade response times

It seems absolutely obvious that blocking roads and making Fire Service personnel either take longer routes or waste valuable time unlocking bollards MUST have a detrimental effect on response times. Waltham Forest Council constantly claim that the emergency services are perfectly happy with road closures and road narrowing. We know from many anecdotes, photos, videos that this is not the case.

Now two of our committee members have dedicated their time and expertise to revealing the truth.

Charlie Edwards has written lots of emails and submitted a number of Freedom of Information requests, and has been relentless in pursuing inconsistencies and failures to acknowledge. You can read about the findings here You can see the pressure that firefighters are under not to reveal the facts of the situation.

Steve Lowe, a long standing Waltham Forest Streets for All Committee member, and passionate cyclist, has been researching all the, sometimes very confusing, statistics and claims. Waltham Forest Matters have published some very clear evidence from Steve to confirm this. Click here The analysis demonstrates conclusively that improvements in attendance times were due to a change in despatch systems. However compared with other boroughs that had NOT closed roads Waltham Forest fire service consistently performs less well.