Hertfordshire firefighters have attended more “malicious” calls this year than last year.
In an annual directorate report, it was revealed that in general there were less fire emergency hoax calls received between 2020 and 2021, compared to 2019 to 2020.
Specifically in the last year, there were 151 hoax fire emergency calls received in Hertfordshire, compared to 239 the year before.
However while emergency service operators wasted less time with calls received, the percentage of these calls that the service attended rose by 8 per cent.
In 2019 to 2020, the service attended 33.5 per cent of hoax calls, compared to the past year with 41.7 per cent.
The report stated that the fire and rescue service is committed to drive down the number of hoax calls by mapping hotspots of pranksters and working with phone network providers to bar persistent offenders.
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