DORSET and Wiltshire fire crews are taking longer to respond to emergencies than they did just over a decade ago, figures show.

The Fire Brigades Union say a national slowing in fire response times is down to "huge levels of cuts" to services across England.

Home Office data shows that the Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service responded to primary fires – the most serious kind – in an average of 10 minutes 13 seconds during the year to September 2021.

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Including one minute 14 seconds for call handling and six minutes 38 seconds drive-time, that is slower than in the 12 months to September 2020, when the average response time was nine minutes 58 seconds.

And the figures show that the response time had slowed since 2011, when crews attended primary incidents in around nine minutes 20 seconds.

That comes despite a drop in the number of call-outs to primary fires, which fell from 1,963 in 2011 to 1,556 last year.

The Fire Brigades Union say there has been a long-term slowing of response times nationally due to decades of funding cuts resulting in fewer firefighters, fire engines and stations.

Separate figures show that since 2011, the number of full-time equivalent firefighters employed by the service dropped from 260 to 195 last year – a 25 per cent fall.

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And the brigade's overall staffing levels were down 22 per cent from 484 in September 2011 to 378 in 2021.

Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service has only existed since April 2016, so declined to comment on any data prior to that, saying the legacy services had different ways of measuring performance.

Deputy chief fire officer Derek James said: "It is important to note that there have been no cuts to the number of fire stations in Dorset and Wiltshire, nor in the number of fire engines.

"Since the service came into being in 2016, our response time to primary fires is broadly the same, and our response time to dwelling fires has actually improved by 18 seconds.

"As a predominantly rural service, the majority of our firefighters are on-call and, as a result, our staffing levels do vary. However, now that we are coming out of the pandemic, we are able to increase our recruitment activity again and we would love to hear from anyone who is interested in supporting their local community in this way."