London Fire Brigade is urging businesses and hospitals with automatic alarms to work with them to reduce unnecessary call outs

Over a third of calls received by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) are from automatic systems, racking up costs of tens of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer, with hospitals being the worst offenders.

In Waltham Forest, the fire brigade was called out 914 times to false alarms in 2014.

They were called to Redbridge 589 times unnecessarily.

Last January, the LFB started recovering £295 for the tenth false alarm attended at the same site within a twelve month period and for all subsequent false alarm call outs.

This has contributed in a yearly reduction of 7.3 per cent, but the fire chiefs have called for greater improvement.

Last year charges of £499,446 were issued.

However, £265,740 has not been paid.

The LFB is calling for organisations and companies to work with them to prevent the costly call-outs, which can be prevented with better system maintenance.

Neil Orbell, head of fire safety at London Fire Brigade, said: “We are called to over 30,000 false alarms every year and some hospitals we go to nearly every week.

“We want to work with hospitals on this issue which is why we will wait until the tenth call before we start to recover our costs.”

The top ten locations for the most false calls in 2014 were

• St Georges Hospital, Tooting 168

• University College Hospital, Euston Rd 75

• Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield 66

• University Hospital Lewisham 62

• St Mungo’s Broadway Camden 60

• Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich 60

• Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead 56

• Homerton University Hospital 49

• St Helier Hospital, Carshalton 49

• Hillingdon Hospital 44