North Yorkshire: Fire service defends false call-out charge plan

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service says almost half its callouts between April 2021 and March 2022 were unnecessary

Charging businesses whose fire alarms trigger repeated false call-outs would protect resources for people in danger, a chief fire officer has said.

North Yorkshire Fire Service is considering imposing a charge after four false alarms in a year.

Crews were called to nearly 7,600 incidents in the year to March 2022, almost half were unnecessary.

Chief Fire Officer Jonathan Dyson said businesses would only be charged when it was "absolutely required".

North Yorkshire and York's police, fire and crime panel was told the ability to charge had always been an option but the brigade had made the policy clearer due to "repeat offenders".

Automatic fire alarms send a signal directly to fire services to respond to, but due to the volume of false call-outs some fire and rescue services now also require a confirmed fire before responding, the committee was told.

Mr Dyson said the service went to great lengths to ensure they were supporting businesses.

He said charging had been proven to be effective in energising managers in places such as universities to tackle people who triggered alarms irresponsibly.

However, he said he did not anticipate the North Yorkshire service having to resort to charging on a consistent or regular basis.

"The problem being of course, to some companies it is cheaper to pay any charge that we incur on them than making the responsible persons do their job or the changes that are required," he said.

The amount of the charge being proposed has not been decided.