London, United Kingdom – A newly released open dataset from RiskFire indicates that fire safety enforcement actions vary by a factor of thirteen across different areas of London.

The London Fire Safety Index consolidates information on fire incidents, safety inspections, enforcement notices, and average emergency response times for every one of the 33 London boroughs, all accessible through a unified search platform. This data originates from records provided by the London Fire Brigade, available on the London Datastore under the Open Government Licence, and is freely available for searching, downloading, or embedding.

Over the most recent twelve-month period, the London Fire Brigade performed 7,049 fire safety audits citywide and handed out 727 enforcement notices, which works out to an average of 11.1 notices for every one hundred audits. However, this average conceals a wide disparity. A business inspected in Ealing, where 23.7% of audits result in a notice, faces a likelihood of receiving an enforcement notice that is thirteen times greater than one inspected in Bexley, where the rate stands at 1.8%. Following closely are Brent at 21.8% and Harrow at 20.9%. At the lower end of the spectrum are Bromley, Newham, and Southwark, with rates of 3.8%, 4.1%, and 5.2%, respectively.

The number of audits conducted does not correspond closely with the frequency of fires. Haringey experienced 483 fires but only 89 safety audits, whereas neighboring Islington had 387 fires and 387 audits—a fivefold difference in audit frequency between two adjacent north London boroughs.

Emergency response times also vary significantly, with a nearly two-minute gap across the capital. The citywide average is five minutes and 31 seconds. Lambeth boasts an average of four minutes and 36 seconds, while Hillingdon averages six minutes and 25 seconds, which is 39% longer. This difference is largely attributable to geography, as the five slowest boroughs are all situated in outer London.

The Index is accompanied by a cladding remediation tracker, constructed using data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Building Safety Remediation. Nine years following the Grenfell Tower incident, the average completion rate across 66 English local authorities is 36.2%. Among the 29 London authorities included in the dataset, 24 have completed less than half of their remediation work. Hillingdon has finished 16.1%. On a national scale, Stoke-on-Trent has yet to complete any remediation.

“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 data coincides with a significant expansion of obligations for building owners. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 eliminated the five-employee threshold for recording a fire risk assessment as of October 2023, thereby bringing a much larger number of small landlords, HMO operators, and small business owners under regulatory scope. Until now, borough-specific information on where enforcement actions are actually taking place has not been easily accessible to them.

“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 format, and any publisher is permitted to embed the borough charts at no cost.

Two caveats should be noted. Enforcement rates reflect both the underlying level of compliance and each borough’s specific enforcement strategy, and the data cannot differentiate between these two factors; therefore, a high rate does not automatically indicate a worse borough. Response times are heavily influenced by geography, with the five slowest boroughs all being outer London areas covering larger land masses. Cladding percentages are calculated based on banded building counts as published by MHCLG, so they should be considered indicative rather than precise.

Sources: London Fire Brigade via the London Datastore for fire data, as at 1 June 2026, and MHCLG Building Safety Remediation monthly data for cladding, as at 31 May 2026. RiskFire consolidates and presents this data. It does not collect it.

About RiskFire

RiskFire publishes free fire safety compliance guidance for landlords, letting agents, property managers and business owners, covering duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 across 17 property types. It also connects property owners with accredited third-party fire risk assessors.

Quick Notes:

• Free reuse. All figures are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Charts on any borough page can be embedded free of charge. Both datasets download in full as CSV or JSON with no registration required.
• Borough-level detail. Individual pages for each of the 33 London boroughs are searchable by borough name or postcode.
• Interviews. Ray Ansel, a BAFE SP205 and NFRAR registered fire risk assessor, is available for comment on fire risk assessment practice, competency requirements and the practical effect of the Fire Safety Act 2021 and Building Safety Act 2022 on landlords and small businesses.
• Updates. Both trackers are refreshed as new source data is published, monthly in the case of cladding remediation.

Learn more at https://riskfire.org.uk/

Enquiries can be sent to hello@riskfire.org.uk

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City: London

Country: United Kingdom