EMERGENCY services are spending thousands of pounds a year on helping to move obese people from their homes.

Figures from the Home Office show that the fire service for Worcestershire attended 31 callouts for 'bariatric assistance' – helping ambulance crews to move obese people – between April 2012 and March 2017.

With the average cost of a callout for a fire engine totalling £400 and a £200 bill for an ambulance to respond to a 999 call, the 31 callouts in the last five years have cost the emergency services a minimum of almost £19,000.

Whilst bariatric assistance callouts represent a small portion of Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service's 8,000 non-fire incidents over the last few years, the majority of callouts took more than one hour to resolve. Of those incidents, two took longer than four hours.

Firefighters often need lifting equipment and special slings to transport people, and sometimes remove windows, walls and banisters.

Area Commander Mark Preece, head of community risk and training at Hereford and Worcester Fire Service, said: “We are called to a range of incidents and have specialist equipment to respond to a variety of situations, which may include bariatric patients.

“We also work with health and social care partners to identify members of the community who may require additional assistance in case of an emergency, enabling us to put pre-emptive plans in place.”

West Midlands Ambulance Service said all of its ambulances are equipped to deal with obese people. It did not provide data relating to the number of obese patients it attends to but it said services are allocated relating to the person’s medical condition and the fact that they are obese is secondary.

A spokesman for the ambulance service said: “As an ambulance service, we receive approximately 3,500 999 calls per day. Calls are received for a wide variety of reasons. They are all treated on an individual basis to ensure the best level of patient care is achieved.”

The need for firefighter help has increased since 2012 when six callouts were recorded in 2012/13. Six were recorded in 2013/14 and five were logged in 2014/15 and 2015/16.

A record nine callouts were made in 2016/17.

The Home Office figures also provided an insight into how many staff and vehicles were used during the move and how long it took.

Almost two thirds of callouts required more than an hour to move the person with between 10 and 19 staff required on four occasions.

The increase in callouts comes alongside a rise in the number of admissions to hospital in South Worcestershire for obesity-related medical conditions, from 4,122 in 2013/14 to 6,174 in 2016/17 – an increase of almost 50 per cent.