80% Fall In Student Fire Call-Outs

A fire safety scheme between the fire service and university students has seen the number of call-outs to halls of residence drop by 80%.

Firefighters thanked staff and students at the University of Glasgow for helping to achieve the reduction in the number of incidents at halls across the city over the past five years.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) revealed crews were called to the properties on 89 occasions during the past year - down from the 456 incidents that took place in 2009/10.

University bosses introduced a new fire safety policy requiring students to complete an induction before moving into halls.

It means residents have to attend kitchen and landing talks designed to highlight the causes of fires and false alarms, and help prevent them occurring.

Those who experienced repeated incidents were also given courses in cooking safely.

George McGrandles, the SFRS local senior officer for Glasgow, said: "False alarms from halls of residence have historically been a considerable drain on the city's fire and rescue resources but this close partnership is clearly producing real results.

"False alarms are most often caused by residents' behaviour, so helping them to understand what causes the incidents has made a huge difference.''

He thanked students and the accommodation provider Sanctuary Students for their work in helping ensure Glasgow's firefighters "aren't tied up at needless incidents when they could be needed at a real emergency''.

Efforts to reduce the number of false alarms included using new "smart detector'' smoke alarms installed as part of a major refurbishment of the halls of residence.