INJURIES in accidental fires across North Ayrshire are at a five-year low, new figures have revealed.

In a report which went before North Ayrshire Council’s Police and Fire and Rescue Committee yesterday (Tuesday), details show that there were only eight injuries caused by the 109 accidental fires between April and December 2017.

Of these eight, not one person was seriously injured or killed as a result and only 33 per cent were taken to hospital with slight injuries.

Across the area, fires in general were down eight per cent and incidents attended by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Services were down five per cent to 1,916.

Of the 1,916, over half of these (994) were false alarms but less than one per cent of the false alarms had any malicious intent.

The number of deliberate fires across North Ayrshire dropped 40 from the previous year to 516.

A quarter of these fires were in houses or flats, 29 per cent in vehicles and the rest spread across other buildings and areas including one fire in a hospital, three in retail facilities and one at a public toilets.

Unwanted Fire Alarm Signals (UFAS) are by far the biggest outlaw for the fire services in North Ayrshire with 464 incidents, which equates to around 25 per cent off all call outs.

These are when an automatic fire detection and alarm system is activated as a result of anything other than an actual fire the activation is classed as a false alarm.

If an attendance is made to such an event by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, then the event is recorded as an UFAS incident. Averaging two calls every single day, these can be anywhere with fire alarms such as residential homes (17 per cent), schools (10 per cent), hospitals (eight per cent), offices and call centres (seven per cent) and hostels (five per cent).

The in-depth report sets out non-fire incidents that they have attended with 88 people being reported as injured in these, up on 79 from 2016/17.

Of these 88, eight per cent resulted in fatalities and 13 per cent resulted in serious injuries.

55 per cent resulted in first aid at the scene and 44 per cent of the incidents were road traffic collisions and the majority of the rest (42 per cent) were when the Fire Service were helping other agencies such as the police and Scottish Ambulance Service.

As well as their day-to-day emergency response work, officers carried out 1,375 home fire safety visits to locals in North Ayrshire and fitted 995 smoke detectors during these visits.

The report states: “The Local Fire and Rescue Service Plan has been developed to set out the priorities and objectives within North Ayrshire and allows our local authority partners to scrutinise the performance outcomes of these priorities.

“We will continue to work closely with our partners in North Ayrshire to ensure we are all “Working Together for a Safer Scotland” through targeting risks to our communities at a local level.

“The plan has been developed to complement key activity embedded across North Ayrshire’s Community Planning Partnership.

“Through partnership working we will seek to deliver continuous improvement in our performance and effective service delivery in our area of operations.

“The Local Fire and Rescue Plan for North Ayrshire identified six areas for demand reduction and is subject to regular monitoring and reporting through the Police & Fire and Rescue Committee.”