Current status: Answered by Siobhian Brown on 4 February 2026
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will set key benchmarks for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to measure response times for the first responding appliance.
There are no plans to set benchmarks for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) to measure response times for the first responding appliance. SFRS’s targeted approach to risk and allocation of resources overtook the focus given to response times some years ago. It is important to focus on outcomes, rather than a simplistic look at response times. There can be a variety of reasons why response times vary, such as traffic conditions, street furniture or distance, particularly in remote and rural areas.
In its report (March 2019) on its scrutiny of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, the Justice Committee noted it was not convinced that setting response time targets is necessarily the correct approach, given the geographic area covered by the Service.
SFRS attends all emergencies and mobilises the nearest available appliance using established mobilisation arrangements. SFRS uses pre-determined attendance arrangements based on incident type and risk and an Officer in Charge is identified for incidents in line with operational guidance. The Service mobilises the necessary weight of resources appropriate to the information available at the time and adjusts this (up or down) as incidents progress. The resources required at an incident can change as more information becomes available, which can make fixed benchmarks difficult to apply consistently. Incident outcomes are therefore influenced by professional judgement, skills, and equipment, as well as the timely mobilisation of resources. Setting benchmarks to record the time when all of the required response assets reach the scene of all incidents would not therefore be a meaningful measurement.
SFRS continues to respond to every emergency incident with the appropriate level of resources.