From a Press Release

From January 2014, London Fire Brigade began recovering £295 for the tenth false alarm attended at the same site within a twelve month period and for all subsequent false alarm call outs. This has contributed in a yearly reduction of 7.3 per cent but the fire chiefs want to see greater improvement.

London Fire are focusing on recovering its cost from the worst offenders but also working with building owners to improve the reliability of their automatic fire systems.

Top 10

The top ten locations for the most false calls in 2014 are

• St Georges Hospital, Tooting                          168
• University College Hospital,  Euston Rd            75
• Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield                  66
• University Hospital Lewisham                           62
• St Mungo’s Broadway Camden                          60
• Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich                60
• Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead             56
• Homerton University Hospital                           49
• St Helier Hospital, Carshalton                           49
• Hillingdon Hospital                                           44

Neil Orbell, Head of Fire Safety at London Fire Brigade said:

“This is not a money making scheme and the last organisations we want to charge are hospitals. However, we are called to over 30,000 false alarms every year and some hospitals we go to nearly every week.

“We want to work with hospitals on this issue which is why we will wait until the tenth call before we start to recover our costs. We also work with them  to see how they can improve the maintenance and management of their automatic fire alarm systems.

“False alarms are a public safety issue as  they  can cause complacency.  When they go off all the time,  there can be a tendency for people to ignore them. In the case of a real fire, this could be disastrous. Moreover, they could delay attendances at real emergencies.”

Bill

In 2014 a bill of £499,446 has been racked up but over half of the invoices (53 per cent) issued have not been paid with a total of £265,740 still owed to the Brigade.

The Brigade can provide advice on reducing calls to false alarms.  An example of recent collaboration  was working with Heathrow Airport who have reduced their numbers of calls by around 70% since April 2013. 

Ends