Third of all Cleveland Fire Brigade call-outs are false alarms: Hartlepool councillor’s call for action

A presentation from Cleveland Fire Brigade’s head of risk and performance Tim Graham stated there have been 2,601 false alarms that firefighters had been out on across the brigade area between April 2018 and the end of January 2019.

This made up more than 35% of the 7,303 emergency incidents firefighters were called out on during the period.

Mr Graham, speaking at the audit and governance committee meeting, added that the total number of false alarms has decreased from this stage last year, along with the total number of emergency incidents attended.

False alarms made up the second highest type of incidents they were called out on, behind secondary fires, of which there was 2,961.

Coun Marjorie James, Hartlepool representative on the committee, said: “The cost of false alarms is still quite a chunk in our arrangements.

“We agreed last year I believe, where someone can be identified as having created a false alarm, that we seriously consider prosecuting them and we should be putting into the public domain how much false alarms actually cost.

“The fact is, based on our expenditure that is a section of expenditure that we could reduce by having a campaign.

“If we could reduce false alarms then we would have extra money within the system to deal with some of the things we want to see happening.

“I think we really do need to push on that doorway as far as the public is concerned that false alarms cost money and potentially could cost lives.

“We do really need to drum that in and we need to back it up by prosecuting where we can identify the perpetrator.”

From April to December 2018 the number of automatic fire alarms reduced by 111 to 1,721 incidents, however the number of malicious false alarms rose by 33%, or 21 incidents, to 85.

Dave Turton, area manager for emergency response, said the brigade had previously ran campaigns over the cost of false alarms and would continue to raise awareness and take action where possible.

He said: “We have seen a rise in our false alarm attendances for what we would call false alarm malicious calls, predominantly as a result of malicious use of break glass call points, particularly in places like schools.

“They just hit the break glass call point and run down the corridor and we will still attended because we can’t verify if that’s a false alarm or not.

“There is still some work to go on malicious calls.

“If we ever receive ever evidence, and we have appliance CCTV to back that up, we will always give that to the police, and we will always pursue.”

Nic Marko , Local Democracy Reporting Service