FIRE crews will no longer answer automatic alarms linking businesses to their station straight away.

From Friday, fire bosses are demanding that a double-check is made to the firm where the alarm has gone off and a member of staff will be asked if there is any sign of a fire. If they say there is none, then no fire engines will be sent.

Fire bosses say the change will save £2m a year by cutting the number of false callouts to commercial premises.

But furious union officials claim lives will be put at risk.

Under the new policy, the fire service will instruct the firm which manages the alarm, to call a number given by the owner of the property.

If the call is not answered, fire engines will be sent out.

Policy

Hospitals, hotels, prisons and other high-risk buildings will be excluded from the new policy.

Most firms rely on a link to a security company when the alarm goes off. Those without a link will call the fire service as normal but then be asked to double-check there is a real fire.

The idea has been suggested before - but was not taken up.

Peter Taylor, Fire Brigades Union secretary for Manchester, said: "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this will place lives at risk.

"The longer you leave a fire, the more dangerous it is to deal with - for firefighters and the public.

"This is clearly an attempt to reduce the number of callouts. When that happens, they can then justify cutting the number of personnel."

He added: "It wasn't long since we had a media campaign of `get out, stay out, call us out'.

"What now? `Get most of them out, go back and check if it's OK, if it isn't call us and hopefully there'll still be a building standing and nobody dead by the time we get there'?"

One senior officer, with more than 15 years' experience, labelled the change `a catastrophe waiting to happen'.

He said: "It's an absolute disgrace. We're putting responsibility for saving lives into the hands of people with no experience or training."

Fire chiefs say that last year, there were 13,987 calls to automatic fire alarms.

Of those, 60 (0.5 per cent) warranted crews using equipment. They estimate that this led to the unnecessary loss of about 97,000 hours.

Assistant County Fire Officer Steve Beckley said: "There is more chance of a crew missing a 999 call while on the way to answer one of these alarms than there is of the alarm itself turning out to be genuine.

"The amount of time wasted could be spent carrying out community safety work, or even going into schools to speak to children."

Geoff Harris, fire safety group manager for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, said that the move would force businesses to manage their own alarm systems.

He said: "Hopefully, this will lead to a more efficient system.

"We are hoping for a time when instead of everybody sighing when an alarm goes off at work because they think it's another false one, they will know it's for real and get out of there."

The policy has the backing of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, who said it would `improve efficiency'.

Crackdown

It comes after a similar system proved successful in a crackdown on prank calls from students in 2001.

But Liberal Democrat spokesman Andrew Stunell, also MP for Hazel Grove, said: "This is a classic example of government incompetence having unintended and potentially dangerous consequences.

"People in Manchester shouldn't have their fire safety compromised because of penny-pinching in Whitehall."

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