{"schemaVersion":"1.0","id":"how-long-the-engine-takes","dataset":"fire-response","title":"How long the engine takes","description":"Two minutes separates the fastest borough from the slowest.","methodology":"Median seconds from call to the first fire engine arriving, per borough, across every incident since January 2024. Median rather than mean, because a handful of very long attendances would move an average somewhere no borough recognises. Calls where no engine was sent — advice given over the phone, or a duplicate call to an incident already being attended — carry no attendance time and are excluded rather than counted as instant. The brigade's own target is a first engine within six minutes.","category":"crime","categoryLabel":"Crime","cadence":"monthly","placeholder":false,"landingPage":"https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes","markdown":"https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes/index.html.md","source":{"name":"London Fire Brigade","url":"https://data.london.gov.uk/publisher/lfb","licence":"Open Government Licence v3.0","licenceUrl":"https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/"},"updatedAt":"2026-07-31T17:20:45.866Z","release":{"label":null,"publishedAt":null,"resourceUrl":null,"methodologyUrl":null,"sha256":null},"observations":[{"series":"","buckets":["Kensington and Chelsea","Lambeth","Tower Hamlets","City of London","Hammersmith and Fulham","Southwark","Islington","Wandsworth","Hackney","Camden","Westminster","Waltham Forest","Lewisham","Croydon","Sutton","Newham","Greenwich","Kingston upon Thames","Merton","Haringey","Ealing","Barnet","Hounslow","Harrow","Barking and Dagenham","Brent","Bexley","Redbridge","Havering","Enfield","Richmond upon Thames","Bromley","Hillingdon"],"values":[259,269,272,278,288,291,291,293,294,295,296,298,298,301,307,309,310,313,313,316,324,328,333,334,336,337,337,341,344,345,346,354,368],"unit":"seconds to first engine","metadata":[{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{}]}],"areaStatistics":null,"visualizations":[{"id":"map","label":"Borough map","description":"Compare median first-engine attendance time by borough; raw calls without an attendance are excluded.","url":"https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes","renderer":"spatial","default":true,"timeControl":"inherit","datasets":[],"transform":null,"controls":null,"metrics":[{"key":"value","label":"Median time to first engine","unit":"seconds"}],"caveat":null},{"id":"ranking","label":"Borough ranking","description":"Read exact borough medians and the underlying attendance sample size.","url":"https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes?view=ranking","renderer":"primary","default":false,"timeControl":"inherit","datasets":[],"transform":null,"controls":null,"metrics":[],"caveat":null},{"id":"first-second","label":"First vs second pump","description":"Compare first- and second-pump median attendance times for boroughs with at least 100 valid records.","url":"https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes?view=first-second","renderer":"scatter","default":false,"timeControl":"inherit","datasets":["fire-pump-response"],"transform":null,"controls":null,"metrics":[],"caveat":null},{"id":"station-ground","label":"Station grounds","description":"Compare incident volume recorded against each station ground; details retain the median first-pump response sample.","url":"https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes?view=station-ground","renderer":"treemap","default":false,"timeControl":"inherit","datasets":["fire-stations"],"transform":null,"controls":null,"metrics":[],"caveat":"Station ground is the incident geography recorded by LFB, not necessarily the station from which a pump was deployed."}],"availability":"observations","note":"The release is complete for the measures represented on the graph page."}