Fake or Time Wasting Incidents The Fire and Rescue Service has Attended in the Past Five Years - Find a freedom of information request

1. I am writing to you under the FOI act to please ask you to provide the number of 'fake' or 'time wasting' incidents your service has attended in Lincolnshire in the past five years (2017-2021 and to the time of this FOI request in 2022).

a. Please can you break this figure down by year?

b. Can you also list the reasons given by callers for the callouts even if they turned out to be untrue?

c. If possible, please can you tells us how many times each reason was given.

Perhaps "Misuse of the 999 service" is the correct term as well as hoax.

We'd like to look at both those defined as "hoax" calls but also those where someone may be faking an illness such as a stroke for inappropriate reasons - e.g. to cause family members worry or to get attention.

Data below in the table to answer Q1a, b and c. The category Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue (LFR) would use to identify incidents of this nature would be 'False alarm malicious'. There are no further categories available in the national recording system adopted by LFR that would answer ‘Misuse of the 999 service’ or 'someone may be faking an illness such as a stroke for inappropriate reasons – e.g. to cause family members worry or to get attention’.