UK Fire & Rescue Services
This page is still in development and more Services will be added

In 1938, prior to WWII, there were over 1700 small Fire Brigades providing fire cover across the UK. After the nationalisation of the fire service during the war, responsibility for the Fire Service was handed back to local authorities in 1948, and the number of brigades was radically reduced to less than 200. A further reorganisation of Local Government boundaries in 1974 consolidated the number of Fire Brigades to 64 larger organisations.

Today, there are 49 Fire and Rescue Services across the UK (44 in England, 3 in Wales, 1 in Scotland, and 1 in Northern Ireland), and they operate from over 1,900 fire stations. The largest service is the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service, with 356 stations, many of which are remote. In contrast, the smallest service by number of stations is the Cleveland Fire Brigade, which operates 14 fire stations. The busiest service is the London Fire Brigade, which attends over 100,000 incidents each year from its 102 fire stations (the Scottish FRS attends around 80,000 incidents).

Only the London Fire Brigade and the Cleveland Fire Brigade have maintained the Fire Brigade naming convention. Since the Fire Brigade Act of 2004, all other brigades have changed their suffix to 'Fire & Rescue Service. One other exception is the West Midlands Fire Service.