“False fire alarms costing UK economy circa £700 million per annum” states Hochiki study

Over 300 SMEs were asked how much they estimate an evacuation caused by an alarm not realised by an actual fire has cost their organisation and if it had a significant impact. Nine out of ten of these types of alarms resulted in the total evacuation of businesses, while one in every four caused significant disruption to the business (so much so that, on average, almost 30% of unplanned fire incidents are costing £1,000 or more in disruptions).

The research indicates that, when the statistics are broadened out to cover the whole of the UK, false alarms are indeed having a multimillion-pound impact on the nation’s economy.

Businesses across a wide range of industries were interviewed, including companies in the hospitality, leisure and travel sectors, retail and ecommerce businesses, the financial and insurance arenas, healthcare, manufacturing, the public sector and the not-for-profit space as well as education.

When asked to think about the immediate and obvious financial impact, owners and senior management alike revealed that these unplanned alarms had far-reaching consequences in terms of lost productivity.

Factors involved included interrupted meetings (33%) and staff settling back down to work (32%). For the manufacturing and IT sectors, over 25% of interviewees said the time it takes to begin production processes again and make sure that security systems checks are completed are the biggest interruptions, while in the food and drink sector, 10% said that preparation processes needing to be restarted is costly. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the resulting food wastage exerts an impact that goes some way beyond financial ramifications.

Impact on businesses

Not all impacts can be measured by numbers alone so respondents were also asked to describe the effects false alarms exert on their business. In hotels, guest relations suffered. “All of our guests had to leave the building and this ruined their guest experience” was one response.

Education of children has been impacted “Teaching was disrupted and pupils and staff had to leave building.”

It would also seem that other emergency systems can be impacted. “The unplanned alarm interrupted the day’s work and we had to contact our on-call electricians to come and fix the alarm, which had also knocked out the emergency lighting.”

Circa 64% of respondents believe that most alarms experienced in the past 12 months were false alarms. This is backed up when you look at what respondents said caused the alarms. Aside from the fire drills and kitchen incidents, dust and smoke realised by building works and maintenance resulted in 20% of all false alarms, closely followed by equipment failures at 18%.

With false alarms accounting for over 50% of the reasons why an alarm is triggered, this may suggest that these buildings are possibly not fitted with fire detection devices or systems that include multi-sensors, which are proven to significantly reduce false alarms triggered by factors other than a genuine fire.

While half of all respondents noted that seeing the alarm in action reassured them that the system works, the most worrying figure uncovered by the research is that 56% of business owners or managers believe excessive false alarm numbers mean that members of staff don’t take fire alarm activations seriously enough, leading to ‘alarm fatigue’ and complacency.

Regular occurrence

The associated cost realised by false alarms among UK businesses is staggering, but the fact that false alarms are causing such complacency in staff is really worrying. For those businesses based in multi-use buildings, or that are public facing (eg hospitality companies and retail outlets) where ‘whole’ fire detection systems are shared, false alarms can be a regular occurrence. If members of staff are thinking that “it's just another false alarm” then the business owner has a serious problem on their hands that should not be ignored.

False alarms can be caused by a lack of maintenance or building renovations that generate excess dust.

Thankfully, multi-sensor technology is constantly evolving to reduce the risk of false alarms and improve fire safety. The ‘Responsible Person’ for the premises, and/or the building landlord, should work with professional and trusted fire safety experts in order to investigate the causes of repeat false alarms such that they can be resolved, thereby ensuring the safety of staff and members of the public, not to mention the future-proofing of the business.”

*Further information is available online at www.hochikieurope.com