Fire crews took more than half an hour to reach blazes in the Dengie during the past year.

A Freedom of Information request showed fire engines took up to 32 minutes to reach a fire in Southminster last year.

When asked how long a response time should be, the Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said: “Frontline pumping applicances within ECFRS are measured on ‘turn-out times’.

“This is the time taken from the initial mobilisation from service control, to the moment the applicance deploys to the incident.

“All stations working a retained duty system are measured against a six minute turn out time, whilst stations aligned to the whole-time duty system are measured on a two minute turn-out time.”

ECFRS said they did not hold figures for the number of times in the past year fire crews had failed to reach the scene of a fire within a set time, saying: “The Service works on the above performance indicator.”