Fire False Alarms Waste 14,575 Days in Last Decade

May 22, 2024

In the year ending September 2023, Fire & Rescue Services (FRSs) attended 246,529 fire false alarms, the largest year ending September figure since 2011. As experts in passive fire protection, Fire Seals Direct will be focusing on false alarms caused by a fire alarm or fire-fighting equipment (including accidental initiation by persons) in error.

What is a ‘false fire alarm’?

Firstly, we must define a fire false alarm. According to the Home Office, a fire false alarm is ‘where an FRS attends a location believing there to be a fire incident but, on arrival, discovers that no such incident exists or existed’

Fire false alarms can be broken down into 3 motive-based categories:

Good intent: Calls made in good faith in the belief that there is a fire.
Malicious intent: Calls made with the intention of getting the FRS to attend a non-existent incident.
Due to apparatus: Caused by a fire alarm or fire-fighting equipment (including accidental initiation by persons) in error.

As experts in passive fire protection, we will be focusing on this latter category.

Here’s a summary of our key findings:

Fire false alarms wasted 349,806 hours in England in the last decade.
Fire false alarms wasted 14,575 days in England in the last decade.
The number of fire false alarms increased by 8.0% compared with 10 years ago.
There has been a 20% decrease in malicious fire false alarms from 10 years previously.
Faulty apparatus is the largest time waster, with a 14% increase from 10 years previously.
Fire response times are getting slower, increasing by 49 seconds compared with 10 years ago.
In 2022/23 alone, fire false alarms wasted 37,164 hours (or 1,549 days)
Including return journeys, 699,611 hours (or 29,150 days) were wasted by fire false alarms in the past decade.

You can find further data and information on our findings on our website.

To read the full article, see our last issue here.