CUTS to fire and rescue services are putting lives at risk as firefighters take longer to get to incidents, their union warned today.

The latest Home Office figures show that the time taken for appliances to travel to fires is steadily increasing — including to serious incidents where lives could be under threat.

The figures show that the time taken to get to such incidents increased by 11 seconds in the last year alone — and has increased by two minutes and 42 seconds since 1994-5.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said the “alarming” figures were evidence of the effects of continuing fire and rescue service funding cuts imposed by the government.

“In a fire, a matter of seconds could be the difference between life and death, so these figures are incredibly alarming,” said FBU general secretary Matt Wrack.

"Services have been cut to the bone, and it’s obvious that with fewer firefighters and scarcer resources, firefighters are taking longer to get to fires, putting lives and businesses at risk.

“This is just part of the picture. Many services are not properly crewing fire engines, so there is no guarantee that there will be a safe number of firefighters on board when it arrives.

“The slowing of response times has been gradual, but the impact over a number of years is staggering.

"The government urgently needs to invest in our services and, crucially, we need national standards to set a required response time. Every second counts.”

Treasury figures show that in 2009-10, when the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition came to power, public spending on “fire protection services” was £3.1 billion, plummeting to £2.7bn in 2018-19.

The number of firefighters in England fell from 41,632 in 2010 to 32,233 in 2019 — a reduction of 9,399, or 22.6 per cent.

Regionally, job losses have heavily affected South Yorkshire, cut from 872 to 653, 25.1 per cent; West Yorkshire (1,609 to 1,027, 36.2 per cent), Derbyshire (633 to 562, 11.2 per cent) and Nottinghamshire from 762 to 590, 22.6 per cent.