The Fire Industry Association has branded the decision of some English fire and rescue services not to respond to certain automatic fire alarms as ‘madness’.

Chief executive of the Fire Industry Association, Graham Ellicott, questioned the decision of at least 12 fire and rescue services not to attend – or to reduce response to – calls generated by automatic fire alarms (AFAs). He pointed to newly published figures showing a reduction of 5% to 337,300 false alarms attended by fire and rescue services in 2010-2011 compared to the previous year, and a third lower than the peak of 507,000 in 1995.

Writing on the association’s blog, Mr Ellicott said:

“The number of false alarms is obviously still far too high, but not as high as you might have been led to believe by English fire and rescue services. In many cases [they have] now withdrawn or greatly reduced attendance to AFA signals to which it is not possible to confirm a real fire with a ‘call back’ from the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC).

“They believe that every call that cannot be confirmed as a real fire is a false alarm. Well, I wish I had this amount of foresight – choosing lottery numbers would be my first port of call!”

The association also warns that new powers under the Localism Act 2011 to allow fire and rescue services to charge for attending persistent false alarm call outs could put lives at risk, if fire alarm systems are turned off to avoid the charges.

Responding to Mr Ellicott’s remarks, the Chief Fire Officers Association told info4fire.com that it believes there is no increased risk where fire services have reduced attendance to automatic fire alarms.

“Most fire and rescue services are pursuing a risk based approach to AFA turnout, matching attendance to risk in conjunction with an unwanted fire signals prevention strategy,” said a CFOA spokesperson. “We believe there will be no increase in risk to occupants or firefighters as a consequence of this approach.”

CFOA acknowledged that some stakeholders, including the FIA, were concerned about the potential impact of reduced attendance to AFAs – including the possible disincentive to install alarms in the future – but it had not seen any evidence of this so far.

“CFOA is engaged in positive discussion with the FIA regarding their concerns and we are working together to review the protocol on AFAs. Additionally we are jointly considering the potential to charge for some calls following the enactment of the Localism Bill.

“Services are striving to ensure best use of resources through modified response to AFAs whilst ensuring that risk is carefully monitored. This approach will provide increased appliance availability for substantive calls and redeployment of resource to community safety and prevention work.”