Sussex fire and rescue services called to more than 36,000 false alarms since 2019

Personal Injury Claims UK has obtained figures through FOI requests about false fire alarm call-outs for East and West Sussex Fire and Rescue Services.

Visit www.personalinjuryclaimsuk.org.uk/personal-injury-compensation/our-research-into-false-call-outs-to-the-fire-service.

The figures show that the service has visited 36,906 false fire alarms since April 2019 with faulty alarms being one of the reasons behind the call-outs.

The data also shows that annual visits have been between 6,000 and 8,000 over a five-year period, or about 20 incidents a day.

A statement written East Sussex Fire and Rescue’s website said: “False alarms cause significant disruption to our training, fire safety and community safety work and, crucially, while firefighters are investigating the cause of the alarm, they cannot attend emergencies where lives are at risk. Because of all of these impacts, our Service will no longer attend fire alarms operating in low-risk commercial premises at any time from 1 April 2024 unless we receive telephone confirmation that there is a fire.”

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The research showed that the lowest number of visits over the past five years was from 2019 to 2020 when the service attended 5833 false fire alarms. Then a year later, this number increased to 7525. The following year (2022/23) the figure rose to 7833 visits. The investigation showed that over the past year (2023/24), the service has experienced a drop in false alarm calls at 7,634.

Personal Injury Claims UK offers free advice and support to anyone impacted by a fire, and operate a 24-hour helpline and claim online form.

A spokesperson for West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service said: “In 2019 the number of unwanted fire signals we attended in commercial premises was at a five-year high, with crews attending an average of five callouts to automatic fire alarms per day. However, since the introduction of our call challenge policy, this has decreased to an average of one callout to this incident type per day. The introduction of our call challenge policy has freed up time for operational firefighters to carry out community fire safety work and has increased their availability for emergencies.”