Kings College Hospital, in Denmark Hill, has come second in a list of buildings guilty of false fire alarms in the capital.
The fire service was called to the hospital unnecessarily on 163 occasions last year. The alerts were mostly triggered by automatic fire detection systems.
The only worse hospital was St George’s Tooting, which saw 169 false call outs, according to the list, published by the London Fire Brigade yesterday.
Kings College Hospital was, however, praised by the fire brigade for reducing fake alerts by 44 per cent since 2007.
James Cleverly, Chairman of London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, said: “Every penny of taxpayers’ money is precious, especially in the current economic climate. We can’t keep sending our crews out to non existent fires, particularly when a little extra care and attention from the owners or managers of buildings could solve this problem.
“This is about the Brigade being able to do the job people expect it to – attend real emergencies. The management of these alarm systems must improve so that our crews are not sent to needless call outs.”
Despite a reduction of 23 per cent in the last five years, a fire engine is still called to a false alarm every 12 minutes in the capital, costing an estimated £34 million each year. As well as being costly for London, false alarms are a nationwide problem, with the Government estimating that they cost the UK around £1 billion a year.
Over a third of all emergency calls are to false alarms, with 40,839 attended last year.
