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.
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.
Exemptions
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:
- 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, including police stations with custody suites.
- Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 2S listed heritage buildings
- Schools
- Nurseries
- Buildings of substantial public significance identified as exempt by London Fire Brigade
- High risk sites storing volumes of dangerous substances (for example, COMAH sites)
Understanding exemptions
How do I apply for an exemption?
We are not inviting any applications for exemptions. However, if you feel that you have a special case because of a specific risk, then you should contact us via your local Borough Team or your local Prevention and Protection Team.
How do you define what is 'publicly significant'?
We consider whether a building is of significant public interest on an individual basis, rather than publish any broad definitions.
We recognise that some individual sites e.g. police HQ or training centres, could present a significant societal/community impact in the event of a fire and therefore could be considered for exemption.
If you feel that you have a special case to make because of the significance of your building, then you should contact us via your local Borough Team or your local Prevention and Protection Team.
Further information