We have been advised that Northampton Fire and Rescue Service are adopting their unwanted fire signals policy and procedures, and will not respond the automatic fire alarm activation in non sleeping premises unlesa afire has been confirmed on the premises. I have been asked to find out how many other fire and rescue services nationally adopt this policy - any ideas? Many thanks.

Interestingly - and we come under NFRS - the call centre that our primary school alarm is directly linked to via activation of the fire alarm failed to inform us of this and we waited about 20 minutes before realising that the fire engine was not attending! Good job it was only a faulty detector or the building could have burnt down.

Thank you for the replies

Welcome to the 21st century fire service. More info on the National UwFS Policy here http://www.cfoa.org.uk/10863 To be fair, a lot of fire service time is wasted attending unwanted fire signals (UwFS). Sometimes there are delay in attending 'real' fires, including those that require rescues, and a friend & colleague of mine was killed in a RTC en route to a UwFS at a Hospital (one of around 200 UwFS on that site annually). So I applaud this change of approach, although do not think for one minute that these changes have been bought in to save lives or increase efficiency. Its all about saving cash, which is not the same thing. However Call Challenging is a different matter. This procedure includes questioning members of the public who call for assistance. It's a dangerous procedure, that does catch out the kids on the way home from School or the drunk on the way home from the pub. But it can go very wrong if you have a over enthusiastic fire control operator: I am aware of a mental health residential home (with minimal staffing during the day and none at night) which, despite being situated about 3 miles away from the local mental health hospital, has it's telephones linked via that hospital switchboard. During a fire in the kitchen - with no staff available, a panicked mentally ill service user (in distress), phoned 999 and was repeatly challenged by the fire service operator. The grounds for the 'challenge' were that the address the fire which the caller given wasn't the registered address of the (hospital) phone, and that the caller's voice was slurred and 'odd - plus he was abusive! The caller simply didn't understand what the 999 operator was explaining and become angry as the fire continued to develop whilst being disbelieved by the fire service that an emergency existed (wouldn't you be angry?!). The Heathcare Trust involved didn't complain (despite my advice) as they didn't want to upset the fire service!!! This call challenging system is now part of the modernised fire service fabric across the UK, and has made good progress in reducing false calls in some locations. But as ever, operators of vulnerable premises like this group home were not consulted or considered. The difficulties posed by remote telephone lines connected to a central exchange were also poorly considered/assessed when devising the call challenging procedure, despite the Brigade involved (London) having an identical system at all their fire stations!!