London Fire Brigade have saved over £9m over the last four years by dramatically reducing the number of false alarm calls attended, according to new figures released.

False alarm call outs fell to 40,734 in 2011 – down 15 per cent on the 2008 figure of 48,771 – but they still represent one false alarm every ten minutes in London.

False alarms are estimated to cost the UK around £1bn a year, and fire brigades across the country have been taking drastic steps to reduce the number of these call outs.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service are amongst one of many that are reducing their response to automatic fire alarms, prompting criticism from the Fire Industry Association last week.

London Fire Brigade called on businesses and their facilities managers across the capital to take greater steps in working with them to help reduce the number of unnecessary call outs.

The figures quoted refer directly to call outs from automatic fire alarms and do not include the 12,769 false calls with good intent (eg. Where a member of the public has mistaken steam for smoke), and 2,149 hoax calls in 2011.

Kings College London were specifically lauded by the brigade following a reduction in false call outs of 44 per cent in the last four years.

Suzanne Whitehead, senior fire safety officer at the college said, “False fire alarms are not only a concern for the fire service but they can also cause major disruption for our staff, students and visitors. We have worked hard in recent years to vastly reduce the number of false alarms across our Estate and we have seen positive results all round, particularly in our Halls of Residence.”

Councillour Brian Coleman, chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, stressed that while the reduction was good news for all, businesses must continue to strive to reduce the number of callouts.

“Each time firefighters are called out to a false alarm there is a cost involved for us and to the organisation we’re called out to, which effectively has to shut down when the alarm goes off. It’s in the interests of taxpayers and businesses to ensure the number of false alarms we attend continue to drop.”

London Fire Brigade issued the following advice to all businesses:

• Ensure that someone within the building is responsible for the alarm and knows what to do when it goes off.
• Check that fire alarms are properly installed and are being properly managed and maintained.
• Investigate fire alarms themselves before calling the Brigade out, where it is safe and practical to do so.
• False alarms are followed up and action is taken to prevent unnecessary further alarms.

Twitterthon

The service has also been taking part in a ‘twitterthon’ to highlight the number of false callouts in a single day. During the course of a massive fire on Wood Lane on Tuesday they tweeted “Since we've been dealing with this large fire in Wood Lane we've attended 15 false alarms across London.”