What won't change

We will always attend fire alarms where we have been notified of confirmed signs of fire or a risk to life. We will continue to respond to alarms at domestic premises and where we know there are people are sleeping overnight.

We will not change how we respond to Houses of Multiple Occupancy, known as HMOs, as we consider these to be the same as domestic premises.

Care homes are exempt from any proposed change to the residential category, due to the 2013 British Standard on fire alarms.

Site specific risk information

We maintain site-specific risk information for a wide range of premises, which has informed other exemptions from the proposed changes.

Site-specific risk information helps to keep our firefighters safe at an incident by highlighting potential hazards as well helping them respond effectively. Each site, or premises, is assessed and given a risk level from 1-5, which determines how much information we collect and share with operational staff.

A level 1 may simply include information that responding crews may find useful, such as ‘butane cylinders in storage area at the rear’ or a simple gate or door entry code. A level 5 would be where an incident at that location would be at high risk of becoming a major incident requiring a multi-agency response, such as Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station or Devonport Dockyards.

If a premises is determined to be at risk level 3-5, it will have a Site-Specific Risk Information report created, known as an SSRI, which may lead to changes to the number and type of resources sent to an incident from the standard response. This approach has meant that we can exempt individual buildings rather than premises type. For instance, rather than exempt all hospitals, we know the specific risks surrounding each of the buildings such as the building height and the complex layout at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth.

While most automatic fire alarm calls receive a standard response, sites with higher risks may warrant an enhanced immediate attendance. For these locations, we will not be changing our response.

There are premises across Devon and Somerset which are exempt from any of the proposed changes to ensure the safety of our firefighters and communities. You can see the list of premises that have been exempted as an appendix (https://www.dsfire.gov.uk/about-us/Afa-consultation/exemptions). Note that some have not been included due to sensitivity of the site.