Work by Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service to drive down the number of lift rescues and false alarms it attends is paying off, with the equivalent of £91,100 saved in 2020/21.
NFRS has been sending information to and visiting building managers where there have previously been stuck lifts. The number of lift rescues attended has fallen by 40% from 155 in 2019/20 to 93 in 2020/21.
The Service started checking automated calls from fire alarm systems at certain premises and certain times of the day before sending a fire engine out, in December 2018. This has resulted in a drop of 27% in the number of automated call-outs attended from over 3,000 in 2018 to 2,184 in 2020/2021 at no risk to these premises or the people in them.
Area Manager Bryn Coleman said: “I would like to thank all the building managers we have worked with for their efforts. Each false alarm or unnecessary lift rescue we go to potentially takes firefighters away from a real fire or serious incident or, at the very least, the training or prevention work they could be doing.
“We will keep working to drive down these figures even further, but would like to reassure the public that we will continue to attend every call that might or might not be a false alarm as if it were real. As we say, we only ever come back from a false alarm.”
Building owners and managers are legally required to make sure automated alarm systems are correctly installed, operated and maintained and that lifts are regularly serviced.
