Home Office data shows Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service responded to 7,088 call-outs in the year to September.

Of those, 47 per cent were a result of false alarms, while just 22 per cent were for actual fires.

The false alarms to the service last year included 47 deemed ‘malicious’ – such as fake or hoax calls.

While malicious callers accounted for 5,473 calls to fire services across England last year, the largest proportion of false alarms occurred due to faulty equipment, such as broken fire alarms and smoke detectors.

In Hereford and Worcester, 2,479 callouts were made for this reason, accounting for a third of all incidents attended by the area’s firefighters last year.

A further 765 false-alarm calls were made in good faith – where the public believed that a fire may have genuinely been taking place.

The number of callouts for Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service dropped 9 per cent this year, compared to 7,799 in the year to September 2020.