Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
We can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service does hold part of the information you have requested.
Questions and final response:
Question 1 – 1. In the last 5 years, [Between April 6- April 5 2019-2024] -
How many incidents did the fire service attend due to faulty/false fire alarms? (Broken down by years, 2019/2020, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24)
Response
Please see attached spreadsheet for details for attendances by Essex County Fire & Rescue Service (ECFRS) for false/faulty fire alarm call outs.
Question 2 – During this five-year period, how much money was spent on fire engines being called out to false calls?
Please refer to our website for more information on our attendance to unwanted fire Signals aka False alarms/faulty alarms https://www.essex-fire.gov.uk/unwanted-fire- signals .
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide an exact cost for ECFRS attendance at false calls, this is due to a number of variables such as number of appliances, crew numbers on appliance etc.
We do use a an average figure of the cost of one appliance deployed at an incident for one hour, the average figure for this would be £400.
We hope you find this information useful.
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Incident and other data is published on our transparency site. Incident Data (essex- fire.gov.uk).
Please note that the response and data released to you as part of this request will be published on our website http://transparency.essex-fire.gov.uk/.
All requests will be anonymised and no personal information including contact details will be disclosed as part of this process.
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Thank you for your interest in Essex County Fire and Rescue Service, we hope this satisfies your request.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to apply for an internal review.
Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of your original email and should be sent to informationgovernance@essex-fire.gov.uk or sent to our postal address: Internal Review, Information Governance Team, Kelvedon Park, Rivenhall, Witham, Essex CM8 3HB.
Please ensure you quote the above reference number in all future communications.