London, United Kingdom – A newly released open dataset from RiskFire reveals that fire safety enforcement differs by a factor of thirteen across the various boroughs of London.
The London Fire Safety Index consolidates information on fire incidents, safety audits, enforcement notices, and average response times for all 33 London boroughs into one searchable platform. This data originates from London Fire Brigade records on the London Datastore, offered under the Open Government Licence, and is available for free searching, downloading, or embedding.
Over the most recent twelve-month period, London Fire Brigade conducted 7,049 fire safety audits throughout the capital and issued 727 enforcement notices, resulting in an average of 11.1 notices for every hundred audits. This average, however, masks a vast disparity. In Ealing, where 23.7% of audits resulted in a notice, a premises is thirteen times more likely to face an enforcement action than one in Bexley, where the rate stands at just 1.8%. Brent and Harrow follow closely, with rates of 21.8% and 20.9%, respectively. At the lower end are Bromley, Newham, and Southwark, with rates of 3.8%, 4.1%, and 5.2%.
The number of audits performed shows little correlation with the volume of fires. Haringey experienced 483 fires but only 89 safety audits, whereas neighboring Islington recorded 387 fires and 387 audits—a fivefold difference in audit frequency between two adjacent north London boroughs.
Response times also vary significantly, with a nearly two-minute gap across the city. The average response time for London is five minutes and 31 seconds. Lambeth achieves the quickest average at four minutes and 36 seconds, while Hillingdon has the slowest at six minutes and 25 seconds, which is 39% longer. This discrepancy is largely geographic, as the five boroughs with the longest response times are all located in outer London.
The Index is complemented by a cladding remediation tracker built using Building Safety Remediation data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Nine years after the Grenfell Tower fire, the average completion rate across 66 English local authorities sits at 36.2%. Of the 29 London authorities in the dataset, 24 have completed less than half of their remediation work. Hillingdon has finished just 16.1%. Nationally, Stoke-on-Trent has not completed 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.
This data release comes as obligations on building owners have been significantly expanded. Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 eliminated the five-employee threshold for recording a fire risk assessment as of October 2023, bringing many more small landlords, HMO operators, and small business owners under its scope. Until now, borough-level details on where enforcement is actually taking place have 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 can embed the borough charts at no cost.
Two important caveats exist. Enforcement rates reflect both the level of underlying compliance and each borough’s specific enforcement strategy, and the data cannot differentiate between the two; therefore, a high rate does not automatically indicate a worse borough. Response times are heavily influenced by geography, with the five slowest being outer London boroughs that cover larger land areas. Cladding percentages are calculated based on banded building counts as published by MHCLG, so they should be considered indicative.
Sources: London Fire Brigade via the London Datastore for fire data, 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. It does not collect it.
About RiskFire
RiskFire provides 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
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
