Wiltshire Fire and Rescue service have speen £100,000 on dealing with arson for each of the last five years a Freedom of Information request has revealed. 

The figure is mostly made up of the crew and fuel costs of attending the fires.

The Swindon Advertiser report: 

DEALING with arson attacks has cost Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service £500,000 in the past five financial years – but the number of incidents and the cost of dealing with them have reduced year-on-year.

The service estimates that it spent £493,872.69 – mostly crew and fuel costs – on tackling 4,046 deliberate fires during the period. This does not include costs incurred by owners and insurance companies.

But the data, released to the Adver after a Freedom of Information request, shows that the numbers are consistently falling, from £110,434.99 spent on 1,010 attacks in 2007/8 to £70,081.23 spent on 623 attacks in 2011/12.

You can read the full story here. 

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.