Draft London Safety Plan 2010/2013 - Fire Brigades Union London

Around 20 percent of our calls to false alarms from
automatic fire systems are to places where we will attend
more than 20 times in the same year.
Map 7 – targeting map for preventing false alarms
from automatic fire alarm systems
We would like every place where people live, work or
socialise to have a working fire detection system to give
early warning in the event of a fire. But for these systems
to be effective, they must also be properly maintained so
they don’t activate falsely.
To achieve a reduction in false alarms from automatic fire
alarm systems we have set long-term targets to reduce
these incidents where they occur in non-domestic
buildings. Most commercial buildings and other buildings
accessible to the public need to comply with fire safety
regulations which include procedures for raising the
alarm in the event of a fire. We believe that faulty systems
and those that regularly and frequently activate falsely
aren’t effective and so we will work primarily with the
responsible people for these types of premises to reduce
false calls .
In July 2009 we introduced a call filtering process in our
‘999’ control centre so that we don’t need to attend these
false alarms when the occupiers can confirm that the
system operated unnecessarily. We hope this action,
together with our unwanted fire signals strategy, will help
to dramatically reduce the number of calls we attend.
PEOPLE SHUT IN LIFTS
In 1966 the LFB attended just 935 incidents to people
shut in lifts (less than three a day). Nearly 40 years later
we are attending around 16,000 calls a year (more than
45 calls a day). When we started to attend these calls we
did so in good faith that we were providing a public
service. However the LFB have no statutory
responsibilities to attend these incidents (except in cases
of genuine emergency) and what we are finding now is
that lift owners are using our services instead of having
the adequate maintenance and release arrangements
required of them under health and safety regulations. We
no longer feel that this is a good use of public money as
we are, in effect, supporting other organisations by
providing them with a service they are duty bound to
provide themselves. It is a very poor use of the
professional skills of our firefighters.
In September 2009 we introduced a call filtering process
for calls received to our 999 Brigade Control to shut in lift
incidents. Where there is a genuine emergency (for
example the person inside requires medical assistance)
we will attend with an emergency response. Where it is
clear that the lift owner has adequate rescue
arrangements of their own, we will defer to their service.
For the time being, if it isn’t clear that alternative
arrangements exist, and there isn’t a genuine emergency,
we will attend but will do so at a much safer road speed
(than when on ‘blue lights’) and we shall make a charge
to the owner for providing the service where we are
called repeatedly to the same address.
Map 8– targeting map for preventing shut in lift
incidents
We will continue to work with lift owners to advise them
of their regulatory obligations and the adverse impact that
us attending their lift has on the emergency and
prevention services we provide.
MALICIOUS FALSE ALARMS (HOAX CALLS)
We receive around 16 malicious ‘hoax’ calls each day.
Through our policy of not attending abandoned calls and
‘call challenging’ suspected hoaxers we make an
emergency attendance to less than half of all hoax calls
we receive.
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