London, United Kingdom – A newly released open dataset from RiskFire highlights that fire safety enforcement actions vary by as much as thirteen times between different London boroughs.
The London Fire Safety Index compiles information on fire incidents, safety audits, enforcement notices, and average response times for every one of the capital’s 33 boroughs into one searchable platform. This data, sourced from London Fire Brigade records available on the London Datastore and distributed under the Open Government Licence, can be freely searched, downloaded, or embedded.
Over the past twelve months, 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 per hundred audits. However, this average masks significant variation. A business or property inspected in Ealing, where 23.7% of audits lead to a notice, faces a likelihood of receiving an enforcement notice that is thirteen times greater than one inspected in Bexley, where the rate sits at just 1.8%. Brent and Harrow follow closely, with rates of 21.8% and 20.9%, respectively. At the lower end, Bromley, Newham, and Southwark report figures of 3.8%, 4.1%, and 5.2%.
The volume of audits does not align closely with the number of fires. Haringey experienced 483 fires alongside 89 safety audits, whereas neighbouring Islington recorded 387 fires but conducted 387 audits — a fivefold disparity in audit intensity between two adjacent north London boroughs.
Response times across the capital differ by nearly two minutes. The London average stands at five minutes and 31 seconds. Lambeth boasts the quickest average at four minutes and 36 seconds, while Hillingdon is the slowest at six minutes and 25 seconds — a gap of 39%. This difference is largely driven by geography, as the five boroughs with the slowest response times are all located in outer London.
The Index is accompanied by a cladding remediation tracker built using data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Building Safety Remediation records. Nine years after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the average rate of completion 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%, while nationally, Stoke-on-Trent has completed none.
“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 comes as obligations on building owners have expanded considerably. 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 insights into where enforcement is actually taking place 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 fully downloadable in CSV or JSON formats, and any publisher can embed the borough charts at no cost.
Two important caveats apply. Enforcement rates reflect both the underlying level of compliance and each borough’s specific enforcement strategy, and the data cannot distinguish between these two factors — meaning a high rate does not automatically indicate a worse borough. Response times are heavily influenced by geography, with the five slowest all being outer London boroughs that cover larger land areas. Cladding percentages are calculated using 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
Media Contact
Company Name: RiskFire.org
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(E) mail: hello@riskfire.org.uk
Website: https://riskfire.org.uk/
City: London
Country: United Kingdom
