Across the selected districts; 2,010 in 2024/25.
Original district comparison · MHCLG source data
Fire incidents in selected areas near London
Compare ten local-authority districts in Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire and West Sussex using one consistent national dataset. These are attended-incident counts—not a safety score for any town or building.
What the comparison shows
A common source for places across four regions
These are raw counts, not rates per resident or property. Larger districts and different land uses cannot be ranked as more or less safe from counts alone.
Includes commercial and other non-dwelling buildings, not only workplaces.
England-wide 2025/26 incidents have “Not known” LSOA and cannot be assigned to a district.
Interactive comparison
Choose a year and incident category
The bars use one scale for the selected category. Hovering is not required: exact counts are shown alongside each district and in the table.
DartfordKent
177
MedwayKent
436
Gravesend is represented by Gravesham borough. Medway covers multiple towns. Use the full local-authority name when citing figures.
Full latest-year table
Fire categories by district, 2025/26
Download the CSV for three years, false alarms and non-fire incidents. The table here concentrates on fire categories relevant to reading the local pattern.
| District and linked town guide | All fires | Primary fires | Dwelling fires | Other-building fires | Secondary fires |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WatfordWatford borough; not the whole county. | 144 | 81 | 29 | 22 | 62 |
| DartfordDartford borough; includes places beyond the town. | 177 | 73 | 13 | 16 | 104 |
| MedwayMedway unitary authority; Rochester, Chatham and other towns. | 436 | 184 | 66 | 45 | 252 |
| ChelmsfordChelmsford district; wider than the city centre. | 254 | 136 | 47 | 33 | 118 |
| CrawleyCrawley borough; not all West Sussex. | 165 | 79 | 35 | 21 | 85 |
| BrentwoodBrentwood borough; not solely the high street. | 102 | 49 | 18 | 6 | 52 |
| BasildonBasildon district; includes other local settlements. | 337 | 158 | 59 | 36 | 179 |
| GraveshamGravesham borough; Gravesend is one town within it. | 203 | 92 | 30 | 21 | 111 |
| MaidstoneMaidstone borough; not just the town centre. | 270 | 110 | 37 | 28 | 149 |
| St AlbansSt Albans district; not only the city centre. | 198 | 99 | 36 | 20 | 95 |
How to interpret it
Useful context, not a premises diagnosis
The figures can support local reporting and prompt better questions, but they cannot tell a landlord, manager or business whether their own fire precautions are adequate.
What they can tell you
- How many attended incidents were allocated to each selected district in a consistent national source.
- How dwelling and other-building primary fires differ from secondary fires and false alarms.
- How totals changed over three complete financial years.
What they cannot tell you
- The fire risk of an individual premises or whether its FRA is current.
- Town-centre counts, incident rates adjusted for exposure or every fire that did not receive an FRS attendance.
- Which district or assessor is “safest” or best.
Download, cite and embed
Download and cite this district comparison
Reuse the complete three-year district table with the financial year, district boundary, original government source and derivation date intact.
Read the citation and reuse guidance →Methodology and limitations
How we assembled the comparison
The official MHCLG low-level geography workbook contains one row per attended incident. We counted rows from its 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 sheets where the 2021 Census LSOA description begins with one of the ten district names shown above, then grouped the official incident-type labels into the categories in the download. The dataset guidance defines those fields and categories.
This is a derived comparison by Fire Safety Services, not an official district statistical release. The reproducible aggregation script is public; the official workbook remains with the government publisher.
Boundaries and missing location
LSOA labels are mapped to local-authority districts, not the narrower towns used in our assessment guides. England-wide rows with “Not known” LSOA cannot be assigned: 22 in 2023/24, 34 in 2024/25 and 343 in 2025/26. This can understate district counts.
Coverage and revisions
The government source covers incidents attended by fire and rescue services in England. Records can be revised, and the guidance warns that incident-level accuracy varies. The 2025/26 sheet spans the move from IRS to FaRDaP in November 2025. Counts here are a dated snapshot, not live figures.
Comparison is not risk ranking
These are absolute counts, not population- or premises-adjusted rates. Other-building fires include many non-dwelling building types, not just commercial sites; no inference about a specific premises or a legal duty should be drawn from the district total.
From data to the actual premises
Find guidance for your building
For an FRA, tell the assessor about the address, use, people and existing precautions. A district incident count is only background context.