WILTSHIRE Fire Service is having to deal with more 999 calls and more rescues from fires.

Within the first six months of this year, the service was called out to 8,041 incidents, compared to 13,924 in all of 2017, a fire authority meeting heard.

And more people had to be rescued from a fire in the first six months of this year than last.

Chief fire officer Ben Ansell said: “The number of rescues from fires are 47 in the first 6 months. This has exceeded all rescues carried out last year. This is a challenge in terms of our operational role."

The figures also showed the brigade was not quite hitting targets for getting to incidents.

A total of 68.5 per cent of them were reached by fire fighters within 10 minutes - 6.5 per cent below the set targets.

The meeting heard more emergencies in rural locations put pressure on meeting response time.

Mr Ansell said: “There has been a decrease in response dates for RTCs and one reason this could be because there have been a lot of incidents at rural locations and we know this can make our response can be quite challenging.”

But although the number of people people killed in crashes had increased slightly since 2016 there was some good news. The number of people seriously injured in car crashes was decreasing

The service wants to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries in crashes by 40 per cent by 2020 and is on target to do so.

As part of its work to improve road safety, the Safe Drive Stay Alive team carried out 44 events in the last four months, reaching 13,000 people.

The scheme, staged with help from other emergency services and safety groups was founded 13 years ago and visits schools, colleges and workplaces to teach people about road safety.