Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service will not respond to any automatic fire alarm (AFA) calls between the hours of 9am and 9pm, starting this month.

It is hoped that the move, which will not apply to residential care homes, sheltered accommodation or buildings with specified identified risk, such as industrial premises, will reduce the number of false fire alarms.

The fire service said it had worked with businesses across the county for the past few years to try and bring down the number of unwanted fire callouts, but was still having to respond to a high number of AFAs at night.

Area manager, Gene Ashe, responsible for business fire safety, said: “We have worked with business owners and proprietors over a number of years to try and reduce the number of these unwanted fire calls, which at one point accounted for more than 90% of all AFAs. This not only disrupted their business activity but meant that fire crews were regularly turning out when not actually needed.

“Despite our efforts, these calls remained at a high level, with the majority being caused by faulty or poorly-maintained fire detection systems and originating from a relatively small number of commercial premises.

“To address this, we introduced a call challenge policy in 2009, which meant that when our emergency control room received one of these calls, the alarm receiving centre or the responsible person at the premises, was asked to confirm whether or not the alarm was a false alarm or a genuine or suspected fire. Where there was a genuine or suspected fire, the usual response was sent.”

The service referred to the Chief Fire Officer’s Association’s false fire alarm policy as part of its announcement. The document, which is not binding, says that if a fire alarm has been fitted to the correct standard, instances of false or unwanted  fire alarms will be rare.

“This protocol recognises that key to the effective performance of AFASs is the correct design, installation, commissioning, acceptance and maintenance process. If the protocols described in BS5839 are followed a false alarm issue is unlikely to occur.”

It also recommends fire alarm 'filtering', which can include a verification through a phonecall.

A number of fire services have also pledged to bring down the number of false or  in the past year, with some considering the idea of imposing fines on repeat offenders.

However, a spokesman from Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue said that the service would not be imposing fines on businesses, because it was “not trying to generate income”.

If a real fire in an unoccupied office building were to occur, he told info4fire, it would respond “in the usual way”.

“They [businesses] are legally responsible for their buildings. It’s their job to ascertain fire risk,” he said.