By FIA CEO Graham Ellicott
I was extremely dismayed to hear last week of Merseyside Fire Brigade’s decision to not attend some automatic fire alarm(AFA) signals as this decision flies in the face of the Department for Communities and Local Government’s research document ‘Costs and Benefits of Alternative Responses to Automatic Fire Alarms – Fire Research Series 2/2008’.
This research concluded that for unconfirmed automatic fire alarm signals “a one pump attendance at day time AFA calls, two pumps to night time sleeping risk and one pump to night time non-sleeping risk properties is the most favoured AFA response strategy.”
Merseyside’s belief that every call that cannot be confirmed as a real fire is a false alarm is ill conceived; sooner or later their refusal to attend will mean that a fire will occur that that will cause extreme property damage which will lead to jobs being lost or in the worst case, somebody will be badly injured or die.
The following quote in the Liverpool Daily Post from Dan Stephens, the Chief Fire Officer, is provocative in the extreme:
“Fire alarm monitoring organisations immediately pass the call to us but what they should be doing is ringing up the premises and asking if they’ve checked. Every time (the alarm goes off) they should be evacuating, but that might not be happening either. We could prosecute for that but that would be prosecuting an awful lot of people and that would be disproportionate.”
These reported comments about the alarm monitoring firms are ill-considered as the fire alarm monitoring organisations are akin to the postman who delivers the mail and it’s not for them to read the mail and interpret which bits are fit to be read!
In my opinion, this type of confrontational attitude from Merseyside Fire Brigade is no way to constructively deal with the false automatic alarm signals problem and indeed their reported comments could lead the Alarm Monitoring Organisations to consider whether dealing with fire signals is a worthwhile business for the future; should they choose to discontinue this business then this would be a disaster for fire safety and would most likely reflect badly upon the proud reputation of the fire and rescue service.
In virtually all cases ‘false automatic alarm signals’ are caused by poor building management and the best way forward is for the Responsible Person and his/her team to be educated in the correct operation of their fire protection systems. To this end the FIA has worked with many end users to drive down their incidence of false alarms and encourages other fire stakeholders to do the same rather than metaphorically waving a big stick at the wrong person!
The FIA asks Dan Stephens and his colleagues at Merseyside to reconsider their decision with regard to AFA attendance based upon a common sense constructive approach which is underpinned by DCLG Research.
Tags: chief fire officer, DCLG, False Alarm, FIA, Fire, fire alarm monitoring, Fire Service, Governemnt, liverpool daily post, Merseyside, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, merseyside fire brigade
Merseyside are not the only ones doing this as the practice is widespead
I have just compleetd an FRA in Bury St Edmunds today at a major retail store and I phoned the Suffulk fire and rescue to check their response to alarms. The response was exactly the same as Mersyside.
If a brigade is to adopt this response the minimum they should do is send a formal letter to ALL premises affected – this is NOT happening.
This is just the latest aspect of brigades lack of appreciation of the basic role they should be providing as a public service.
Richadr Coates MIFireE; FCMI; FJOIFF
Hi Richard,
Thanks for your comment. I agree, The changes in the AFA Attendance Policies by the English brigades are many, disparate and to the onlooker totally uncoordinated. I believe that there is a minimum standard of response that is expected by the brigade’s ‘customers’ across England and the politicians and fire chiefs are missing this point totally. Sooner or later such short sightedness will lead to a major fire with the obvious consequences. These reductions in attendance are driven by cost cutting whereas fire knows no geographical boundaries hence the need for a minimum attendance across the country as will be the case in Scotland. Here an enlightened approach from CFOA Scotland and the move to one Fire and Rescue Service is driving a consistent approach to AFA attendance.
Leadership is needed in England on this matter and here we look to CFOA and the LGA to provide this in conjunction with DCLG and CFRAU. The FIA has offered to work with all of these bodies with varied success on this matter but progress is very slow while at the same time the English brigades are changing their AFA attendance policies on almost a day to day basis.
Perhaps we should all move to Scotland? I knew my ownership of a West Highland Terrier would come in useful someday…
– Graham Ellicott
West Midlands Fire Service also do not respond to Alarm centres, it would be intersting to know how many brigades adopt these measues
Hi Alan,
Monica here. Yes, we’ve been following this subject closely over the last year. In May last year we warned business of 12 Fire and Rescue Services changing their AFA response policies here