Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service plans to stop responding to automatic alarm calls at hospitals during the daytime after a year in which incidents including a cotton bud fire were attended. The service says that a 999 call will need to be made for crews to attend an automatic alarm call at hospitals between certain hours.
It comes as figures show that, in the last financial year, running from April 2021 to April 2022, Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service responded to nearly 3,500 incidents triggered by an automatic alarm that turned out not to be a fire. The service introduced a policy in 2018 which saw call challenging being used 24 hours a day when an automatic fire alarm is activated.
Call challenging involves a series of questions being asked to assess whether an emergency response is required before crews are deployed. But several premises are exempt from call challenging, including residential flats, care homes and heritage sites.
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NHS hospitals were also exempt, as well as private hospitals which had sleeping on site, but the fire service is now planning to change the way it responds to hospital alarms. The service is proposing that automatic fire alarm calls will not be attended at hospitals between 7am and 7pm as of April 1.
The service says that it will still attend such incidents if they are backed up by a 999 call. The plan will be discussed at a meeting of the Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire and Rescue Authority on January 6.
A report to be presented at that meeting says: "Hospitals are professionally managed premises with good levels of fire protection, with well trained and competent members of staff. During waking hours, it is noted that hospitals operate with a sizeable number of staff, therefore in the event of a fire, trained staff are on hand to firstly investigate then call for assistance in a brief period of time.
"Reviewing the service's attendance to hospitals between defined hours, where increased levels of staff are present, would allow the service to engage in greater levels of prevention and protection activities, allowing resources to be aligned to reducing risk." The report says that 10% of all the alarm calls it attended which turned out not to be a fire came from hospitals last year.
Such incidents are known as Unwanted Fire Signals (UwFS), with Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue attending 3,480 last year. That is an increase on the previous year, when the service attended 3,142 of these calls, but better than the position in the 2017/18 year when it attended 3,793.
As part of an ambition to reduce the number of UwFS incidents by 10%, the fire service is planning to make sure that they are accurately reported by fire crews so that numbers are not inflated. The service is also recommending a consultation on introducing "charging for persistent offenders".
But in regards to automatic alarm calls at hospitals, the fire service says that it attended 143 of them across the Queen's Medical Centre and King's Mill Hospital between April and September 2022. The service says just five of these incidents were found to be a fire and that none of them had spread beyond the item first ignited.
The five incidents were caused by an overheated lift mechanism, a light fitting, a microwave, a cotton bud and an overheated extractor fan. Of these 143 incidents, 18 of them were at the Kings Mill Hospital and none of these turned out to be a fire.
The fire service report adds: "Hospitals have well developed fire safety management processes and staff training procedures, in addition to the modern and extensive coverage as part of fire alarm systems which protect the buildings. Engagement with hospitals will commence immediately to ensure hospitals are prepared for this change, with fire inspecting offers being available to support and advise on current safety measures."
A spokesperson for the Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust, which runs the King's Mill Hospital, said: "All our public services have a duty to ensure that their precious resources are used in the most efficient and effective way possible. As a trust, we have well-tested plans in place to deal with a whole range of incidents and eventualities to ensure that patients can continue to access the treatment they need safely – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We are committed to working alongside Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue to fully understand the impact of these proposals and to find a resolution that ensures the safety of the patients and the public that both organisations are proud to serve." The Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, which runs the Queen's Medical Centre, was also contacted for comment.
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