Kent Fire and Rescue Service
Findings from KFRS consultation on response time standards and council tax options for 2024/25

Next, the consultation asked for views on whether people agreed with moving to a new set of response time standards. The current standards do not differentiate between rural and urban areas. Whilst we regularly achieve this target in urban areas we meet it less regularly in rural areas, so are misleading customers in rural areas as they are less likely to get a response within that time. This is due to the greater distances that need to be travelled, and the fact that our urban areas are served by wholetime firefighters who are on station and ready for immediate response, whereas our rural areas are served by on call fire fighters who have to respond from home to the fire station before proceeding to the incident.

Taking the emergency / non-emergency and rural / urban classifications set out above, we asked people’s views on moving to the following response time standards, which differentiate between urban and rural areas.

Emergency – urban – within 9 minutes on at least 75% of occasions.

Emergency – rural – within 15 minutes on at least 75% of occasions.

Non-emergency – within 30 minutes (regardless of location).

As shown in Graph 3, there was widespread agreement with this proposal, with 70.4% of respondents supporting it. Among the comments received from those who disagreed with the proposal, a frequently cited view was the idea that there should not be a differentiation in response times between rural and urban areas. Some also expressed a view that 15 minutes might be too long to wait for a response. In contrast, a considerable number of comments expressed support for the proposed change, recognising the differences that exist between these two areas.