A typical automatic fire alarm panel is pictured above being reprogrammed.

31 July 2009

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service and local organisations are continuing to drive down the number of false alarms in commercial premises, figures presented to today's meeting of Buckinghamshire & Milton Keynes Fire Authority’s Safety Panel show.

Automatic fire alarm systems triggered 2,474 of these calls for firefighters between April 2006 and March 2007. This number went down by more than a quarter to 1,754 for the same period between 2007 and 2008, and the panel heard that the figure had fallen again to 1,439 between April 2008 and March 2009.

As a result, fire engines are going out on around 1,000 fewer unnecessary calls than they did two years ago. This helps lower the risk to motorists and firefighters, and reduce the possibility that firefighters could be dealing with a false alarm while someone else needs their help more urgently at a genuine emergency.

It also enables firefighters to spend more time on vital fire and road safety work in the community.

Panel members were given examples of premises where a simple change of procedure had led to a significant drop in the number of false alarms, including:

• Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury - down more than 80 per cent from 149 in 2006/07 to 24 in 2007/08 and 23 in 2008/09.
  
  
• The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes - down more than 70 per cent from 54 in 2006/07 to 42 in 2007/08 and 14 in 2008/09.
  
  
• Wycombe General Hospital, High Wycombe - down more than 50 per cent from 77 in 2006/07 to 52 in 2007/08 and 36 in 2008/09.

Malcolm Brightman, the officer who leads Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service's work to reduce the number of calls to buildings where fire alarms have gone off when there is no fire, said: "We have been working very closely with local organisations, and it is clearly paying off.

“Automatic fire alarms are sensitive devices which can be accidentally triggered by all sorts of things, including burnt toast, steam, hairspray, dust and small insects.

"With fire alarm systems causing disruption to the working day in terms of staff having to evacuate their offices every time an alarm is triggered, they have been keen to work with us to reduce call-outs.

"The reduction also lessens the likelihood of staff becoming complacent when they hear an alarm."