London Fire Brigade - History

History

Following a multitude of ad-hoc firefighting arrangements and the Great Fire of London, various insurance companies established firefighting units to fight fires that occurred in buildings that their respective companies had insured. As the demands grew on the primitive firefighting units they began to co-operate with each other until, on 1 January 1833, the London Fire Engine Establishment was formed under the leadership of James Braidwood. With eighty firefighters and thirteen fire stations, the unit was still a private enterprise, funded by the insurance companies and as such was responsible mainly for saving material goods from fire.

Several large fires, most notably at the Palace of Westminster in 1834 and warehouses by the River Thames in 1861, spurred the insurance companies to lobby the UK government to provide the brigade at public expense and management. After due consideration, in 1865 the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act was passed, creating the Metropolitan Fire Brigade under the leadership of Captain (later Sir) Eyre Massey Shaw. In 1904 the brigade was renamed as the London Fire Brigade. The LFB moved into a new headquarters built by Higgs and Hill on the Albert Embankment in Lambeth in 1937.

During the Second World War fire brigades were amalgamated into a single National Fire Service. The separate London Fire Brigade for the county of London was re-established in 1948. With the formation of Greater London in 1965, this absorbed most of the Middlesex Fire Brigade, the borough brigades for West Ham, East Ham and Croydon and parts of the Essex, Hertfordshire, Surrey and Kent brigades.

In 1986 the Greater London Council (GLC) was disbanded. A new statutory authority, the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority (LFCDA) was formed to take responsibility for the LFB. The LFCDA was replaced on 3 July 2000, when the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) took over. At the same time, the Greater London Authority (GLA) was established to administer the LFEPA and coordinate emergency planning for London. Consisting of the Mayor of London and other elected members, the GLA also takes responsibility for the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), Transport for London (TfL) and other functions.

In 2007 the LFB vacated its Lambeth headquarters and moved to a site in Southwark.