A fire service has seen an increase in callouts but still managed to beat the national response time target.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service was dispatched to 1,019 primary fires in the year to March, which are the most serious with a threat to life or property. This was 49 more than the year before.

Despite the increase, people only had to wait for an average of nine minutes and four seconds for firefighters to respond to incidents – roughly the same as the previous year.

This includes time spent on the phone reporting the incident, the crew’s preparation and their journey time.

The national average is nine minutes and 13 seconds.

READ MORE: Health Secretary Steve Barclay on new hospitals in Brighton visit

A National Fire Chiefs Council spokesman said: “In recent years response times across all incident types have been gradually increasing as the range of incident types attended by fire and rescue services has grown and resources have been targeted at higher risks such as fires in the home, where most deaths and injuries from fire occur.

“Attendance times for fires in the home have remained relatively static over the last ten years.”

Of the total fires in East Sussex over the last 12 months, 436 were dwelling fires and 230 road vehicle fires.