BBC London has obtained figures which show that there were almost 56,000 false alarms in London in 2011 - which equates to one every ten minutes.

There are three types of call out for the fire crews:

real - where the fire brigade really is needed;
malicious - where callers deliberately call out fire crews but there is no incident; and
auto fire alarms - where sensors react in error.

And it is this latter which cause the most problems, being set off by things like burnt toast, aerosols, cigarette smoke and steam.

These worst offenders tend to be at hospitals, universities and airports - the statistics reported that fire crews went 158 times to St George's Hospital in Tooting and to Heathrow Airport 493 times in 2011. However both of these stats were down from figures reported for the previous year.

False Fire Alarm Call Outs in London

2007: 71,679
2008: 68,528
2009: 62,976
2010: 60,624
2011: 55,719

Comparing these latest figures to the more than 71,000 call out ins 2007, it is clear that the number of false alarms generally is slowly falling. It is believed that this is due to specialist fire officers working with organisations to improve maintenance of their systems.

Spy Alarms offer maintenance and upgrades of existing fire alarm systems in London and the South East.