London, United Kingdom – A newly released open dataset from RiskFire reveals that fire safety enforcement differs by a factor of fourteen across London’s boroughs.
RiskFire’s London Fire Safety Index compiles fire incidents, safety audits, enforcement notices, and average response times for each of the capital’s 33 boroughs into one browsable interface. Sourced from London Fire Brigade data on the London Datastore and published under the Open Government Licence, the information is freely available for searching, downloading, or embedding.
In the last twelve months, the London Fire Brigade performed 7,049 fire safety audits across the city and issued 727 enforcement notices—an average of 11.1 notices for every hundred audits. However, this average masks considerable variation. A property checked in Ealing, where 23.7% of audits result in a notice, is thirteen times more likely to receive an enforcement notice than one in Bexley, where the figure is just 1.8%. Brent and Harrow follow with rates of 21.8% and 20.9%, while Bromley, Newham, and Southwark are near the lower end at 3.8%, 4.1%, and 5.2%.
The number of audits conducted shows little correlation with the number of fires. Haringey experienced 483 fires and received only 89 safety audits, whereas neighboring Islington had 387 fires and 387 audits—a fivefold difference in audit activity between two adjacent north London areas.
Response times also vary, with a gap of nearly two minutes across the capital. The London average stands at five minutes and 31 seconds. Lambeth reports an average of four minutes and 36 seconds, while Hillingdon averages six minutes and 25 seconds—a 39% longer wait. This disparity is largely geographical, as the five slowest boroughs are all located in outer London.
The Index is accompanied 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 tragedy, the average completion rate across 66 English local authorities is 36.2%. Of the 29 London authorities in the dataset, 24 have completed less than half of their remediation work. Hillingdon has finished 16.1%, while Stoke-on-Trent has completed none at all.
“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 data release comes at a time when obligations on building owners have expanded significantly. 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 the rules. Until now, borough-specific information about where enforcement is actually taking place has not been readily available 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 limitations should be noted. Enforcement rates reflect both underlying compliance levels and each borough’s enforcement strategy, and the data cannot distinguish between the two, meaning a high rate does not automatically indicate a worse borough. Response times are strongly influenced by geography, with the five slowest boroughs all being outer London areas covering larger land areas. Cladding percentages are calculated using banded building counts as published by MHCLG and should therefore be treated as 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 obligations 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
