North Yorkshire Fire Engine Availability Sees Slight Drop Despite Tax Hikes

Residents in North Yorkshire are paying more for their fire service, yet average fire engine availability has dipped by two per cent over the last twelve months.

The overall readiness of fire engines across North Yorkshire has seen a marginal decline over the past twelve months, according to newly released performance data.

The latest annual report for the 2025-2026 financial year reveals that combined average fire engine availability dropped to 68 per cent, representing a two per cent decrease compared to the previous year. A breakdown of the figures shows that the whole-time duty system fell from 98 per cent to 96 per cent, while the on-call duty system experienced a similar dip, moving from 58 per cent down to 56 per cent.

Despite the slight downward trend, officials have noted that the first three months of 2026 showed minor improvements when compared to the same timeframe in 2025. The service has also bolstered its ranks by introducing 30 whole-time firefighters at the turn of the year, along with 35 new on-call recruits.

Strategic resource management remains a priority for the region. The report highlights that dynamic cover tools have been successfully deployed to maintain emergency responses, including during the Fylingdales wildfire incident near Whitby.

However, the drop in availability has prompted questions regarding value for money, especially following recent increases in local taxation.

Jo Coles, Deputy Mayor of York and North Yorkshire for Policing, Fire and Crime, expressed concern over the figures given recent tax hikes. She said:

"The thing that that concerns me I suppose from a public point of view, there is significant additional investment going into the fire and rescue service, people are paying more in their council tax than they were previously, significantly more over the last two years.

I understand the work that's taking place but I can also understand from the point of view of the public that they're paying more for their fire and rescue service and at the moment that availability looks to be worse than it was a year ago."

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (NYFRS) currently operates just over 40 fire engines.

Ben Illsley, Director of Operational Support and Assurance for NYFRS, says availability has fallen slightly over the last 12 months but adds that the rate of decline is slowing.:

"There was a slight reduction by 2%. So for an organisation that has 40 something fire engines that equates to just under 1 less fire engine available on average at different times.

That is the smallest decrease we've seen year on year in the last four or five years in North Yorkshire. So positive that we're stabilising, we'd love to see increase beyond that point as well but there has been a slight decrease.

A lot of the challenge is with the on call availability, it's not the primary employment of most of our on call firefighters, and we have to deal with a lot of fluctuations and variations in availability around people's private life, personal life and their other employment as well."

Ben Illsley added that there have been positive signs in the first part of this year.:

"It has stabilised to a certain degree, we're certainly not content that it's gone down 2%, a lot of work goes into maintaining that, a lot of work went into the recruitment over the last year as well. Significant intake of on call firefighters, but it remains a challenge for us as an organisation on call availability and we have stabilised it somewhat last year and showing a small increase in January February March year on year."

Chief Fire Officer for NYFRS, Jonathan Dyson, sought to reassure residents that their financial contributions are making a difference. He said:

"As a point of assurance for the public that they have indeed supported the service exponentially with the with the increased funding which we're very grateful for.

This is still offsetting in some ways by some of the the cuts that we've seen within the sector and within North Yorkshire, but availability is a very strategic issue, tactical issue, operational it affects all of the organisation and the public can absolutely rest assured that we are doing everything we can to increase on call availability across the county."

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