London Fire Brigade policy is that we do not attend Automatic Fire Alarms (AFA) between 7am and 8.30pm, unless someone calls us to confirm that there’s a fire.
This policy however, doesn’t apply to all buildings. If there’s an AFA in the following types of building, fire crews will attend without confirmation of fire:
Exemptions
- Private dwellings / houses
- Flats (includes high-rise)
- Houses in Multiple Occupation
- Mobile / park homes
- Houseboats
- Hospitals
- Residential care homes / nursing homes / hospices
- Children’s homes
- Specialised housing premises (for example, sheltered housing, extra care sheltered housing, supporting living)
- Student accommodation / halls of residence
- Residential boarding schools
- Hotels / motels / B&Bs and other guest accommodation
- Hostels (for example homeless, rehabilitation) / youth hostels
- Prisons / young offenders’ institutions / other secure establishments
- Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 2S listed heritage buildings
- Schools
- Nurseries
- Buildings of substantial public significance identified as exempt by London Fire Brigade
Why don’t we attend all AFAs?
- In 2025 AFAs made up 34% of all incidents we attended – that’s 47,500 calls.
- Less than 1% of calls from non-residential AFAs are ultimately recorded as fires – 99% are false alarms.
- Not attending frees up our firefighters for additional fire prevention and protection work, operational training and to attend real emergencies.
Guidance for Responsible Persons
If your building is not exempt
If the building you’re responsible for is not on the exemption list above, you’ll need to do the following:
- Review your Fire Risk Assessment and make sure it’s up to date.
- If an Automatic Fire Alarm (AFA) is triggered during day-time hours, you will need to confirm, via 999, that there is a fire in your premises.
- Remember: we will still attend AFAs between 8.30pm to 7am.
If your building is exempt
If you’re a Responsible Person for an exempt building, you’ll need to do the following:
- Ensure the person responsible for calling us, via 999, in the event of a fire, is aware of the exemption and can relay that information in the call.
- Please note that all AFA calls to fire in commercial buildings between 7am and 8.30pm, will be subject to consideration before any emergency response is made, so please ensure the advice above is clearly understood by your call operators and do not assume any exemptions