Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service called out to record number of false fire alarms

Across England, the number of false fire alarms continues to rise, with the Fire Brigade Union urging businesses to maintain their fire alarms to prevent them being triggered in error.

Recent Home Office data shows the Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service attended 3,043 false fire alarms in the year to September – up from 2,831 the year before and the highest since at least 2010.

Of the alarms, 2,167 were caused by a fire alarm or firefighting equipment activating in error. Meanwhile, 772 were "good intent", meaning someone triggers a fire alarm, believing there is a real fire threat even though there isn't.

A further 104 were "malicious". These are deliberate false fire alarms, often termed as hoaxes.

Stuart Auger, Head of Response at Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue said: “False alarms cause significant disruption to our training, fire safety and community safety work and, crucially, while firefighters are investigating the cause of the alarm, they cannot attend emergencies where lives are at risk.

“These figures clearly show that we are responding to more false alarm calls across the county. Work, however, is underway to review our approach to dealing with these calls to ensure that our resources are used where there is a genuine risk to life.”

Nationally, fire and rescue services attended 254,041 false alarms, the largest figure since the year ending September 2011.

The majority (183,115) were a result of faulty alarms, a 5 per cent increase from the previous year. In contrast, the number of "good intent" and "malicious" false alarms both fell.

Steve Wright, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, said: "Firefighters attend automatic fire alarms to prevent fires from spreading in buildings while they are unoccupied."

He added fire services do not knowingly send firefighters to false alarms, as they can only investigate whether there is a fire once they have mobilised.

The Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service attended 8,115 fire and non-fire incidents last year, an increase from 7,416 the year before.

Of the incidents last year, 1,558 were fire incidents (19 per cent).