NEARLY half of the daily incidents attended by Cumbria firefighters are false alarms, new figures show.

Firefighters attend 11 incidents every day in the county on average, but five are false alarms, according to statistics from 2017-18.

Of the 11 call-outs a day, just two are “primary fires” or those involving property, buildings, caravans, motor vehicles or machinery.

The service also receives an average of two call-outs a day to “secondary fires” or minor blazes involving rubbish, grass or derelict properties.

The rest of the daily call-outs involve road traffic collisions, said a new report.

Mark Clement, the strategic fire reform manager for Cumbria, revealed the figures at a meeting of the Barrow Local Committee.

Addressing the cross-party panel of councillors at Barrow Town Hall, Mr Clement said the service had a good response rate in emergencies.

But the statistics showed that providing on-call fire cover in villages is becoming more difficult. On-call firefighters are those who do not do the job full time.

Mr Clement said: “Predominantly, in our rural stations throughout the county, people don’t tend to work in the villages any more.

“They leave the village to go and work in towns so we don’t have the level of cover, although we do manage 75 per cent cover.”

He said that in the coming years, the service would be “transformed and improved”.

Fire chiefs plan to broaden the type of incident it delivers with a greater emphasis on prevention.

Mr Clement said: “We are going to look at how we can work smarter and a key theme is making a big emphasis on fire prevention activity.”

The service now visits 10,000 homes a year to conduct “safe and well visits” which involves talking candidly with residents about fire risks in the home.

Cllr Helen Wall, the Labour member for Old Barrow, said she attended a visit on Barrow Island and praised the firefighters involved.

She said: “They were friendly, kind and helpful. The people taking part just told them the truth. If they were asked if they smoked in bed, they admitted it.

“They got honest answers because they were asking the questions in the right way. They said they were not there to judge or criticise they just reassured people that they were there to keep them safe.”

Mr Clement said the fire service brand was very positive.