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Fires: Hoaxes and False Alarms

Answer

The relevant data that are held centrally are for financial year periods and cover all emergency calls, with no distinction as to whether relating to a reported fire or other type of incident.In preparing this answer it became evident that the figures provided in the answer to a very similar question on 28 April 2009, Official Report, columns 1170-76W, were of numbers of false alarm incidents attended, rather than of emergency calls. The data available for the periods requested by both questions are therefore shown in the tables.

Total emergency calls¹ handled, fire and rescue services in the north-west, 2002-03 to 2008-09
	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09
Cheshire	31,102	33,506	29,254	28,757	28,435	24,294	22,300
Cumbria	13,444	14,710	14,594	14,082	13,258	12,199	9,411
Greater Manchester	101,348	113,111	88,927	89,066	95,724	85,026	75,010
Lancashire	48,508	53,171	44,383	42,189	44,727	38,471	34,849
Merseyside	68,494	72,236	61,459	58,635	61,506	52,524	45,537
North West	262,896	286,734	238,617	232,729	243,650	212,514	187,107
¹ Duplicate calls for incidents counted individually
Source:
Annual Returns from Fire and Rescue Services to Communities and Local Government

Malicious false alarm calls handled, fire and rescue services in the north-west, 2005-06 to 2008-09¹
	2002-03 to 2004-05¹	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09
Cheshire	—	785	636	570	432
Cumbria	—	450	447	407	349
Greater Manchester	—	5,128	5,061	4,493	3,062
Lancashire	—	1,758	1,714	1,476	1,498
Merseyside	—	1,568	1,188	1,024	723
North West	—	9,689	9,046	7,970	6,064
¹ Data prior to 2005-06 not held centrally
Source:
Annual Returns from Fire and Rescue Services to Communities and Local Government

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

508 c1120-2W; 325039

Session

2009-10

Subjects

Fire and rescue services Emergency calls North West

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk