Fire services in Wales won't attend commercial and public sector fire alarms from July

Fire chiefs said the change will free up resources and they had taken steps to communicate it to organisations which would be affected.

Some premises have fire alarms which don’t trigger a response from the fire service. But many premises have automatic fire alarms which do trigger a fire service response via a receiving centre.

Mid and West Wales Fire Service said statistics showed that the majority of signals from these systems were false alarms triggered by things such as cooking fumes, dust, or inadequate maintenance.

Area manager and head of corporate risk, Peter Greenslade, said: “It is important that commercial premises take ownership of false fire alarms within their premises as is their legislative duty. We will of course always respond to 999 calls when people have identified that there is a fire.”