London Fire Brigade and Ambulance Service reveal scale of hoax calls

London Fire Brigade was called to 6,636 hoaxes between 2014 and 2018
Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images
James Morris31 March 2019

London’s emergency services have warned people not to take them for April fools as the scale of hoax callouts is today revealed.

Ahead of April Fools’ Day on Monday, data obtained by the Standard shows London Fire Brigade and London Ambulance Service attended more than 10,000 malicious callouts in the past five years.

This has wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer cash, with the ambulance service blasting hoax callers for “delaying responses to patients who are seriously ill or injured”.

The fire brigade today also shared the most “foolish” calls it has recently received, including a hamster stuck between a toilet and a wall in Tower Hamlets.

London Ambulance Service blasted hoax callers for 'delaying responses to patients who are seriously ill or injured' (file image)
Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Since 2016, 659 people have called the brigade about people being locked in a toilet, with 56 calls involving cats or dogs being stuck in unusual places.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed it received 24,921 calls worthy of challenging between 2014 and 2018. Of these, crews were deployed to hoaxes on 6,636 occasions.

London Fire Brigade hoax callouts attended  

2014: 1,411
2015: 1,316
2016: 1,380
2017: 1,320
2018: 1,209

Tom George, its deputy commissioner, said: “No matter how strange a call may seem, we will always attend if there is a genuine emergency but you should always think carefully about how to use our resources.

“A number of the more unusual calls we attend involve children or animals so we would always urge Londoners to keep an eye on their youngsters or pets to ensure they aren’t getting themselves into sticky situations which could be avoided.

“With the help of our control officers challenging calls, we have been able to reduce the number of hoax calls we receive and this enables us to be available for when there is a genuine emergency.”

London Ambulance Service received 5,846 hoax calls in the same five-year period, sending out crews to 3,444 of these.

London Ambulance Service hoax callouts attended  

2014: 668
2015: 652
2016: 678
2017: 746
2018: 700

It costs £205.93 each time an ambulance is dispatched and Paul Woodrow, the service’s director of operations, said: “We receive more than 5,000 calls a day and thankfully the number of these which are hoax calls is very low.

“However, hoax calls divert resources away from genuine emergencies and can delay responses to patients who are seriously ill or injured.

“We work with the police to prosecute where possible and appropriate people who make hoax calls as this type of behaviour is not tolerated.”

The Metropolitan Police has not responded to the Standard’s request for hoax call data.

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