Leeds, apparently - Holbeck. Not that unusual: Prestwick Airport banned toasters in December last year after three main terminal evacuations in a month due to toasters; Newcastle upon Tyne NHS banned them in a number of hospitals in the city for the duration of the last fire fighters strike, and some of the areas in some Trusts in London have a ban in place. http://www.yorkshirepost...-tackle-riots.6183115.jp for the Yorkshire Post article.

We have had 5 fire engine call outs in the last year due to burnt toast. When an organisation of 4000 has to evacuate, that's a lot of taxpayers ££££'s wasted both by us and the Fire Brigade. I would happily ban toasters for that reason alone.

Aah! I wondered why the alarm clock was in the kitchen.

Burnt Toast = Smoke + Fire Alarm/Alert = Fire Call = Fire appliance attend. = Impact of Unwanted Fire Signals (UWFS) UWFS have a major impact on the fire and rescue service due to: * diverting essential services from real fires and rescues (putting life at risk); * unnecessary risk to crews and the public while responding (accidents); * disruption to training, arson reduction and community safety activities (education saves lives); and * cost of attendance to tax payers. The impact of UWFS on the community includes: * disruption of business (time wasted, loss of business, theft); * disrupt customer activities, cause inconvenience to residents and become a nuisance to the community; * complacency – "it’s just another false alarm" – reduces effectiveness of management plans and procedures; * diverting essential services from real fires and rescues (putting life at risk); * cost to business when Retained Duty System (RDS) firefighters are released from work to attend an UWFS; * disruption to arson reduction, community safety and fire safety activities (such as education and Home Fire Safety Visits); * impact to the environment of unnecessary appliance movements; and * drain on public finances. False alarms can cost lives An unwanted, or false fire alarm signal, received by the fire and rescue service is treated like any other emergency call, because our Control operators do not know it is an unwanted or false alarm. This means important resources are sent to the scene. A real fire or accident may be taking place elsewhere and our response may be slower because we are attending the false alarm. Attendance to false alarms can also disrupt firefighters' work patterns and training. Reaction People who hear regular false alarms begin to ignore them, or react more slowly. This may put them at significant risk in a real emergency. Or: About £4000 for each false alert. Sounds seriously Health and Safety to me.

I don't think it is a case of banning them under H&S grounds but more to do with disruption to business and wasting the emergency services time. i think it is less of an inconvenience that someone can't have toast than it is to turn out a company off 600 people and 4 fire engines. because someone can't stand their and watch what they are doing. I guess alternatives would be to change the detector head but then that would be delaying activation if there was a real fire. Phil

Along the same wave length Oli But my thought was why reduce the response level (time) from a detector just because someone keeps burning the toast, the fire has to be quite significant before the heat level would be sufficient to activate the head. we had this issue at my old company, the control panel would show an alert level and they would phone the rest area to see if someone had burnt the toast that way they could deactivate that particular head. Also raises another question how many detector heads haver been changed in hotel rooms since the smoking ban came into force. as smoking would be a cause for false alarms when smoking was allowed heat detectors heads would have been fitted, but have they now been changed back to more suitable ionisation / optical heads?? Red

I remember when I worked in House Management at the Royal Opera House back in 2001 we had to evacuate the building during a show (thankfully during an interval) thanks to an exploding potato which one of the hose ballet staff decided to cook in a microwave. It made international news. http://www.thefreelibrar...g+hot+potato.-a077285208

As was said before, use heat detectors in kitchen areas. Going to extremes such as banning toasters without good cause, gives H&S a bad name. And we have a hard enough time as it is!!!!

And here we get to the nub of the problem! The people who are in charge of replacing the detectors at cost to the business are NOT the same as the people who bring in the portable toasters. It is therefore cheaper to remove the toasters (at no additional cost plus any future savings on electrical inspections/ Fire Brigade call outs/ company down time) than to replace the detectors (at say £50 per hit for a fixed wired system). I tell you, it's all down to cold hard cash.