24 hoax calls per month is what Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service (DWFRS) must deal with.
Chart created by Cat Lindsay, information sourced from FOI Request
February, the most expensive month of the year so far received 28 malicious calls.
Out of those calls 18 were attended to and 10 of them were determined not genuine by the control room.
Debbie Lowe, Information Governance Officer for DWFRS said: “Hoax calls do not delay getting help to genuine calls, all calls are treated as an emergency.”
Since 2018 the the approximate cost to the Service for the on-call appliances being sent to these incidents is £108,200.
Sarah Knell, watch manager in DWFRS control room, said: “The ultimate effect is that we are wasting money.”
She added: “If we were not spending money on hoax calls we could staff better or we could spend it on education or cadets.”
Sarah’s team work on an eight day shift pattern, two on, four off, two on, during this time period the team will receive three hoax calls on average.
Sarah said: “We got one call where people said they were stuck in swings and they’d even faked screaming down the phone, this was very stressful to deal with.”
She added: “We can sometimes determine hoax calls through how people speak to us over the phone, like when we ask for personal details like they get annoyed and swear at us down the phone.”
Sarah believes educating early is the best way to deal with hoax calls.
DWFRS go out to schools and talk about the wider implications of hoax calls.
As well as the consequences like certain phone numbers can get blocked so when there is a real emergency they cannot call.
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