Appliance Availability

We work hard to prevent emergencies from happening in the first place. When there are emergencies, our crews are available around the clock, every day of the year.

Our fleet

We have a large fleet of fire engines, officers cars and other specialist vehicles. We refer to these as appliances.

We have key measures for ensuring that fire and rescue appliances are always ready and able to meet our attendance standards.

These are some of the things we do which help keep our appliances "available" or "on the run" to respond when you need us.

High standards of maintenance

We carry out regular, planned maintenance to keep all vehicles and equipment in good working condition. Unexpected faults or problems are minimised by these frequent and rigorous checks.

Availability during vehicle maintenance

During planned maintenance or in the event of sudden problem, spare appliances are available and are swapped with the defective one. This means we can maintain our service, allowing crews to be continually on hand to respond to emergencies. 

Strategic location of appliances

Our annual assessment of risk determines what resources are needed and where they are located.

Appliances are strategically positioned to ensure the swiftest response times possible. We aim to have 15 fire engines distributed across the County of East Sussex and in Brighton and Hove.  

Sending appliances to incidents

In an emergency, a combination of appliances is often used, depending on the type of incident and how serious it is. On those occasions where resources are deployed for an extended period of time, appliance and crews are relocated around the Service to ensure that the level of cover remains consistent with our risk profile.

Read more about how we provide emergency cover.

Crewing arrangements

We have a range of duty systems that our firefighters work. These provide a level of response and availability in line with our annual assessment of risk. On occasions this increases our appliance availability to more than 15 fire engines, depending on the availability of our on call station. 

Appliance Availability

Day Shift 16

Night Shift 17