Photo: John Bradley (under licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Charging businesses for callouts is one way of addressing the problem, as the London Fire Brigade has been doing since January this year if they attend more than 10 false alarms at a single premises over a 12-month period.
But according to the new CFOA guidance, a partnership approach between stakeholders is the best means of tackling the issue. Stakeholders include the responsible person in a premises, alarm receiving and monitoring centres, the industry sector responsible for the design, installation, servicing and maintenance of systems, and fire and rescue services (FRS).
Toolkits
The CFOA guidance offers fire services a toolkit from which to formulate their own local strategies and policies, providing a step-by-step process with a “holistic approach” from design to installation, including commissioning, management, filtering and FRS response, performance monitoring and follow-up visits.
The toolkit comprises:
Poor performance
A second set of guidelines gives fire services options for reducing unwanted calls. These options include:
Fire alarm monitoring organisations
A key area where false alarms can be reduced, says the CFOA, is through agreed best practice between fire services and representatives from fire alarm monitoring organisations.
A Code of Practice outlines best practice in improving emergency response arrangements for remotely monitored fire alarm and detection systems. It also advises on reducing the number of unwanted fire signals passed to FRSs.
The CFOA and the fire alarm monitoring industry have agreed to work together to implement:
Third-party accreditation
In their report (p23), the CFOA encourages users of fire safety and protection products, systems and services toutilise only UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) third-party certificated manufacturers, suppliers, installers and maintenance providers, who offer users more confidence and reliability in terms of quality and safety.
Third Party Certification is evidence that a service or product adheres to certain technical, environmental or ethical standards, since it has been assessed by an independent expert.
False alarms that automatically alert local fire service cost the UK economy over £1bn a year.
Often blamed on poor management or maintenance of fire alarm systems they can be triggered by dust or steam.
Although false alarms have fallen 42% in the last 10 years, they’re still a massive waste of fire-service resources and time.
The rate of reduction in false alarms appears to be slowing down. While the number in the UK over 2012-13 fell 6% to 294,800 from 313,300 in 2011-12, they subsequently fell by 4% to 223,400 between 2012-13 and 2013-14.
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