Kittens trapped in mud, a budgie stuck on a ledge and a fox with its head caught in a watering-can are among the animal rescues that have cost London Fire Brigade £1.8 million over the past six years.

The brigade, which recently closed 10 fire stations and axed hundreds of jobs in a drive to save tens of millions of pounds, has been called out on 4,578 rescues since 2009, including for cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, budgies and even drowning fish.

Animal rescues cost the LFB an average of £16,500 a month and over the six-year period the £1.8 million bill represents 5,382 hours of work, at an hourly cost of £326.

The call-outs were uncovered using Freedom of Information requests, which revealed that almost half the calls were for cats, costing £900,000. The most costly rescue was of a cat stuck in a wall space in a flat in Gospel Oak last July. The operation took 12 hours and cost £3,912. 

It cost £1,500 to rescue a fish from a pond in Enfield, freeing a kitten from mud cost £1,630 and another £1,630 was spent saving a puppy trapped on a frozen lake in Richmond Park. It also cost nearly £1,000 to remove a horse called Mischief from a ditch in Pinner. 

The brigade also spent £300 getting a cat out of a car engine, £326 to help a fox get its head out of a watering-can and were called more than a dozen times to help hamsters in distress. 

In March this year, it took two days to free a seagull stuck behind netting at a building in Woolwich. Crews also saved a squirrel trapped on a satellite dish in Wandsworth and another trapped in a gutter in Hornchurch. This summer, the LFB said the number of animal rescue call-outs had dropped by 20 per cent since launching its I’m An Animal, Get Me Out Of Here campaign, which urges people to call the RSPCA about animals in danger.

Ron Dobson, London Fire Commissioner, said: “If there is a cat up a tree, or an animal stuck anywhere, the first port of call should always be the RSPCA. When firefighters are out rescuing animals, they’re not available to attend real emergencies.”

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I would agree that the first port of call should be the RSPCA to act as facilitator, but perhaps Ron Dobson should take off his blinkers and treat these incidents as adding  to unplanned "staff training" skills/exercises