Foreword
The Mayor of London’s City Resilience Strategy 2020 describes London as a global city and the economic engine of the United Kingdom (UK), accounting for 23 percent of the UK’s economic output. London is a city with an unusual density of risk. As well as being the seat of the UK government, London holds the residence of the head of state, is the UK’s financial hub and contains approximately 15% of the United Kingdom population. Both the UK Government and London’s Mayor’s Office have declared a climate emergency. London has experienced both surface water flooding and wildfires in recent years.
London’s unusual density of risk is reflected in the range of risks recorded in the London Risk Register. This document is informed by the National Security Risk Assessment; and the public facing National Risk Register. These registers describe low frequency high impact events nationally, however the density of risk in London means that risks on these registers have a higher likelihood of being realised in London than most other areas of the UK. In some cases the exposure to these risks in London drives the national risk rating because events occurring in London have national impact.
Geopolitical turbulence and conflict has been a noted feature of 2024. As a global city the impacts on London are likely to be complex and varied. The London Risk Register includes cyber-attacks, energy cut-offs, assassinations, terror attacks and direct attacks of various kinds. London Fire Brigade (LFB) is required to maintain service provision during periods of disruption and to respond directly and in partnership to emergencies where its capabilities are needed. The recent electrical infrastructure fire in Hayes, London, which impacted Heathrow airport highlights the major impact to UK and global communications, travel, imports, exports, as well as national and organisational reputations a London-located incident can have.
The City Resilience Strategy states that sudden impact events can immediately disrupt a city and may have wide ranging and unexpected impacts. Consequently, resourcing to risk for LFB indicates the Brigade must resource and plan to be able to respond both to demand under normal requirements and to the likely occurrence of one or more extraordinary risks which may have national impacts.
The purpose of this assessment is to allow LFB to understand and prioritise the risks in its operating environment and align its resources appropriately.
Section 1. Approach to Assessing Risk and Key Findings
Introduction
The Fire and Rescue National Framework for England 2018 places a duty on all Fire and Rescue Services to “identify and assess the full range of foreseeable fire and rescue related risks their areas face”. The London Fire Commissioner’s (LFC) Assessment of Risk for London (AoR) is the Brigade’s response to that requirement. It sets out all foreseeable risks to which the LFB might be expected to respond, or which may impact its response, and assesses their risk based on a combination of their likelihood and consequence. This assessment presents information on risk of incidents that may have happened only rarely, or never, as well as risks that are common.
This assessment informs LFB’s prioritisation of statutory and discretionary activity detailed in the Community Risk Management Plan (CRMP), known as “Your London Fire Brigade,” and in the LFC’s six service strategies; Prevent, Protect, Respond, Prepare, Recover and Engage.
The AoR is not the only process LFB uses to determine and provide its services, but it can be used to understand the operating environment and the steps that LFB is taking to make people safe. The AoR is reviewed annually, or sooner if significant new data become available. This enables the Brigade to adapt its operations to London’s changing environment.
The CRMP seeks to make the Brigade more community-focussed and service-led. By this we mean that we want to help people both feel safe as well as be safe; consequently, public concerns and public perception of risk are featured prominently in this risk assessment as, “Layer One. Public Concerns and Public Risk Perception.”
The UK Government and the London Resilience Forum (a partnership of organisations with responsibility for emergency preparedness in London, including London Fire Brigade) each produce a risk register of reasonable worst-case risks. These are updated periodically and are used by them to prepare their response should these risks occur. The London Risk Register (LRR) is a register of the risks that most impact London and draws these risks largely from the National Security Risk Assessment. This risk assessment uses a broad definition of risk and includes impacts on human welfare, behaviour, economic, infrastructure, environment, and security. The Brigade must plan for how it will continue to operate and respond, in the case that any of these scenarios are realised. The AoR therefore makes extensive reference to the London Risk Register, referred to in this document as, “Layer three: Extraordinary risks and risks from the London Risk Register”.
The National Risk Register, a public facing document based on the National Security Risk Assessment, 2025 is available here; National Risk Register - 2025 edition.
The London Risk Register 2025 is available here; London Risk Register 2025 (PDF, 582KB).
In the CRMP the LFC made a commitment to Introduce Local Risk Management Plans, co-designed with local residents and business. Borough Risk Management Plans are the vehicle for this local level engagement and can be found via our Community page.
Who should use the Assessment of Risk (AoR)?
The AoR is intended to be used primarily as a technical document by LFB staff to direct and prioritise work. It is available to the public, but it is acknowledged that due to its complexity it is not intended to be a public risk communication tool.
LFB Teams involved in direct risk communication work with the public should refer to the AoR when planning and prioritising their communication but use appropriate tools for the specific audience they are communicating with.
The AoR is available to partners and other fire rescue services who may wish to use the analysis to inform their own planning; but it is not intended for this purpose.
The AoR is intended to be a tool for understanding risk to London and to Londoners. It is not an assessment of risk to Firefighters. Firefighter risk whilst responding to incidents described in this assessment is not considered within it. This is intentional. LFB has other systems and control measures for measuring and managing firefighter risk.
Our approach to assessing pan-London risk
To assess all foreseeable risks, both fire and non-fire, for which the LFB may be expected to put in place controls; including risks that may have happened only rarely, or never, and risks that are common, the Brigade takes a layered approach. This approach also allows us to assess and understand how the public experience threat and risk in their lives independent of recorded or reported incidents.
Public concerns and perception of risk are intentionally presented as layer one of the assessments, ensuring communities’ concerns are highlighted.
This AoR assesses frequently occurring events from recent incident data, and low frequency but high impact events from the London Risk Register independently of each other, providing separate tools for both prioritisation of day-to-day activity and for worst case planning. LFB also uses this AoR to identify emerging trends and future risks which may impact the operating environment, or which may require the planning of additional capacity or capability.
Learning from other fire services, partner agencies and from international incidents of note informs this assessment through the inclusion of layer four, Emerging trends and future risks.
This AoR provides tools for understanding geographic variation of specific risks. The Brigade uses methodology developed by the NFCC to highlight the geographic distribution of indicators for increased risk related to dwelling fires and road traffic collisions (RTC). These maps are on the Layer 2 page. The Brigade has also developed Neighbourhood Density Zones, to illustrate where demand for services predominantly occurs and where different types of risk are concentrated. This map is on the Layer 2 page.
The exposure of individual members of the public to various risks will differ significantly with their location and activity, this exposure may be correlated or independent to any individual protected characteristic. The layered approach adopted to assessing risk ensures that each type of risk an individual may be exposed to, for whatever reason, is assessed allowing mitigation to be planned.
The NFCC have developed a national approach to assessing risk for dwelling fires and road traffic collisions. The AoR adopts this approach as a means of identifying geographic areas across London most likely to be associated with higher risk. Using the NFCC methodology ensures that a robust and nationally agreed approach to risk is adopted. Any risks associated with protected characteristics whilst not directly addressed in the NFCC work is addressed through the inclusion and aggregation of the identified factors that correlate with likelihood and consequence.
Because key factors associated with individual dwelling fire, and with broader Road Traffic Collison (RTC), risk are included in the NFCC definition of risk work and mapped pan-London for the AoR; data sets on individual personal vulnerability are not assessed separately within this document.
Our approach to individual vulnerability
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, in their 2017 Sendai Framework Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction, define vulnerability as, “The conditions determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or processes which increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets or systems to the impacts of hazards.” Because individual susceptibility to the impacts of a hazard is distinct from the likelihood or consequence of a hazard being realised in London, specific personal vulnerability data sets are not used in this assessment. However, by adopting the NFCC methodology for combined risk in layer two of this document, any individual factors associated with heightened susceptibility to the consequence of dwelling fires is addressed. This is through the inclusion of the identified personal factors that correlate with consequence of fire. The outcome of this assessment is displayed in the NFCC definition of risk map for London. This risk map can therefore be viewed as including vulnerability to dwelling fire within it.
LFB’s Prevention Strategy (PDF, 1.5MB) and LFB Policy 1010 identify common characteristics of those who are most at risk of, and vulnerable to the effects of, fire. These data are used in planning the allocation of Home Fire Safety Visits and other preventative work. The six characteristics below are used within LFB as indicators of vulnerability or risk to dwelling fire.
- Smoker.
- Lives alone.
- Over 60 years old.
- In receipt of care (informal, formal or both).
- No working smoke alarms.
- User of mobility aids, or chair/bed bound.
It is noted that individuals can be susceptible to the impacts of hazards other than fires through these factors and others. The relevant factors indicating heightened vulnerability will differ depending on the context of the incident type and the hazard to which an individual may be exposed. LFB staff who support communities at incidents or during their work are trained to identify vulnerability including, but not limited to; socio-economic, mental health, and physical health needs. Crews are trained to identify possible safeguarding issues and take immediate actions to support vulnerable members of the community, keep them safe and refer to the appropriate agency for further support if required.
Description of layers
Layer 1. Public Concerns and Public Risk Perception
This layer identifies the risks that Londoners are most concerned about in relation to fire and rescue service-related emergencies. These concerns will not necessarily reflect the likelihood or severity of actual incidents but reflect the concerns held by members of the public.
The purpose of this layer is to:
- Establish the primary concerns of the public as they relate to the fire service.
- Inform risk communication work and public engagement.
- Allow public concerns to be considered when setting organisational risk priorities.
- Use the lived experience of communities to inform Hazard Identification.
Layer 2. Risks relating to property, places and incident type
This is a data-led risk assessment using the most recent five years of incident data on casualties and of demand on LFB resources at incidents. This layer highlights risks which are relatively common under normal requirements. Using recent incident data highlights the type of incidents and locations associated with high likelihood of casualties and of a larger draw on resources, e.g., road traffic accidents and domestic fires leading to casualties and fires in rural areas drawing on resources. Where incidents have most recently occurred has been shown to be a reliable predictor of where incidents are most likely to occur in the near future and is used to model our anticipated demand under normal requirements.
The purpose of this layer is to;
- Assess which property types and locations and which incident types are associated with the most casualties under normal requirements.
- To assess which property types and locations and which incident types, have the potential for the greatest wider impacts and resourcing implications for LFB under normal requirements.
- To inform prioritisation work within LFB service strategies.
Layer 3.1 Extraordinary risks and risks from the London Risk Register
This is a risk assessment of rare or “reasonable worst-case” scenarios which may not occur with sufficient frequency to appear in LFB five-year incident data or are yet to have occurred. Reasonable worst-case risks are assessed against a range of impacts e.g. human welfare, behavioural impact, economic, infrastructure, environmental and security. Risks are taken directly from the London Risk Register, produced by the London Resilience Forum (LRF). The risks for which LFB is the lead are scored using input from LFB subject matter experts but also include input from partners. Risks on which other partners lead are scored in a similar way. This gives the Brigade and the London Resilience Forum a shared partner-wide perspective on risks. This register includes risks that LFB will not have to respond to but may be affected by and for which it may need continuity plans.
This is a different way of assessing risk from the data-driven assessment of commonly occurring risks in layer two as it looks at the possible severity of infrequent but high impact events and an assessment of what the possible implications are for London. This layer deals with risks that may not appear in incident data as they are infrequent or rare but none the less have been assessed as reasonable expectations in a worst-case scenario.
Presented independently of the LRR are unlikely but possible events which do not yet appear in the LRR or in recent incident data but are highlighted through cross departmental engagement and as such are considered appropriate to highlight as part of the LFB’s Assessment of Risk. Risks from this section may progress to the LRR through partner engagement in the London Resilience Forum.
Layer 3.2 Extraordinary risk scenario modelling
This AoR includes the findings of developing scenario modelling which assesses the impact on service delivery and appliance mobilisation of reasonable worst-case scenarios from the London Risk Register. Modelling in this section is a development of the existing optimisation model and Dynamic Cover Tool (DCT) used by LFB to determine optimal disposition of resources in real time. Outcomes provide an operational stress test for reasonable worst-case scenarios under differing demand conditions.
The purpose of these layers is to allow the Brigade to plan and prepare for:
- Response to low frequency but high impact events.
- Combinations of events leading to a high overall demand on LFB resources.
Layer 4. Emerging trends and future risks
This layer describes trends identified in incident data and the outcomes of workshops. These workshops drew together the Brigade’s various sources of expertise, information and horizon scanning functions to identify early warning signs of changes to risk or to the operating environment that may not yet be apparent in incident data or existing risk registers, but which have been identified by Brigade subject matter experts and policy owners. The results of these workshops were moderated at a meeting of Assistant Commissioners. Learning from other fire services, partner agencies and from international incidents of note also inform this assessment layer. This layer allows for longer term planning to be undertaken and controls to be identified in the early stages of a risk’s development.
The purpose of this layer is:
- To gather information about emerging trends and developments that could have an impact on the Brigade.
- To explore how trends and developments might combine and what impact they might have.
- To involve a range of people in futures thinking. To increase the knowledge and insight within LFB about new and emerging risks relevant to LFB operations.
- To create and foster a shared understanding of emerging risk across the Brigade’s various functions and departments.
Relationships between risk layers
Although presented independently for ease of use. Similar risks may appear in more than one layer within this assessment. Each layer has a different intended focus and use by different stakeholders, leading to the data being treated and presented differently. This difference in assessment method and focus is the reason that similar risks can appear in both scoring systems but scored slightly differently. For example, the reasonable worst-case scenario for a large residential high-rise fire, presented in layer three is for a single large event to cause many casualties, this is however not typical; the commonly occurring risk, presented in layer two, is for more frequent fires, each producing fewer casualties. The likely future manifestation of risk is dealt with in layer four. The level of public concern which may be reflective of and influenced by day-to-day events, single large events or concerns for the future is presented in layer one but is both input and an output and is influenced by all the risks presented in this report. Concerns raised by the public will influence our hazard identification for future risks particularly in LFB risk layer four.
This Venn diagram illustrates four interconnected layers of risk: (1) Public Concerns and Risk Perception, which surrounds and influences all other layers; (2) Common Risks related to property, places, and incident types; (3) Extraordinary Risks from the London Risk Register; and (4) Emerging Trends and Future Risks, positioned at the intersection of all layers. Arrows indicate interactions such as the impact of common incidents on the public, the impact of large events on public perception of risk, and London Resilience Forum knowledge driving understanding of future risk. Arrows also show that while London Fire Brigade communicates emerging risks to the public, the public also highlight concerns about hazards.
What is different in this edition?
Partnership planning identified a more complex and varied malicious threat picture in 2024, this threat level has been sustained through 2025. As a result, there remain many malicious threat types listed on the London Risk Register in 2025 and in this Assessment of Risk. Since 2024 the risk of Marauding Terrorist attack using firearms has increased further on the London Risk Register as has Malicious Cyber-attack on civil nuclear installations.
Our incident data shows there has also been an increase in the severity of High-Rise Fires and the frequency of incidents of persons threatening to jump.
Table 1 sets out key changes where risks to which LFB may respond, or which may impact response, are assessed as both very high and increasing.
Risks which are, “Very High”, and have increased since last assessment in 2024
Malicious attack on civil nuclear installations - Cyber
Assessment type: London Risk Register
Detailed report: AoR Layer 3 / London Risk Register
Marauding terrorist attack - firearms
Assessment type: London Risk Register
Detailed report: AoR Layer 3 / London Risk Register
Low temperatures and snow
Assessment type: London Risk Register
Detailed report: AoR Layer 3 / London Risk Register
Fires in purpose-built high-rise flats
Assessment type: London Risk Register
Detailed report: AoR Layer 3 / London Risk Register
A1HR Fire High Rise Buildings
Assessment type: LFB Incident Data
Detailed report: AoR Layer 2 / AoR data report
B12 Person threatening to jump
Assessment type: LFB Incident Data
Detailed report: AoR Layer 2 / AoR data report