ESSEX firefighters attended 92 hoax calls across the county in the first six months of this year.

There were another 62 hoax calls which crews didn’t go out to.

Last year, the fire and rescue service received 384 hoax calls, attending 250 of them.

This was down on 2011, when there were 445 crank calls, with 289 of them having crews dispatched to them.

Deliberate hoax calls to the emergency services are illegal and can risk public safety by diverting crews away from real incidents.