EFFORTS by firefighters to engage with school pupils can often lead to an increase in malicious false alarms.

At the last meeting of West Yorkshire Fire Authority's Community Safety Committee, members were told about the rise in deliberate false alarms across the district in the past year, with over 370 incidents.

A report into the issue highlighted the Wakefield area, saying: "A small surge in malicious calls may be linked to renewed efforts regarding engagement at schools and Academies within the district."

When Bradford Councillor Mike Pollard (Cons, Baildon) questioned the reasoning for this, area manager Chris Kirby said: "Sometimes firefighters go to a school for a visit and kids think 'that was great, how do we get them back?' "Unfortunately the visits do have an impact on some individuals, you talk about how dangerous malicious calls can be and you sometimes give them an idea they hadn't thought about before."

The report shows there was 131 malicious false alarms in the Bradford area last year.