Firefighters have revealed their time is being wasted by hundreds of prank calls every year.

Despite stringent security checks to deter hoaxers, there were more than 700 occasions last year when Sussex firefighters rushed to an incident only to find there was no fire at all.

More than a quarter of those calls were made in Brighton, Hove and Roedean.

The county's brigades have condemned people who risk lives by phoning 999 with malicious and time-wasting inquiries, leaving firefighters unavailable to answer real calls for help.

But it is not just malicious callers that are the problem. People who ring up with genuine inquiries which have nothing to do with the fire service are equally distracting.

In the past year Sussex firefighters have been called on to run a bath, to sort out an electricity bill and because someone wanted a chat.

Gary Towson, a spokesman for West Sussex Fire Service, said: "The big danger is if people are making a mickey call' and then there is a real emergency, someone could die. They are playing with people's lives.

"It stops us doing work we would rather be doing, like fitting smoke alarms and fire prevention work."

Control staff are trained to deal with suspicious requests by warning the caller they are being recorded, that their number is known to the service and that action could be taken against them if they persist with an untruthful request.

Last year BT targeted 30 boxes in West Sussex and reduced the number of malicious calls made from them by 98 per cent.

The police also use CCTV to monitor phone boxes from which malicious calls are made.

The action has helped to cut the number of hoax calls but the fire service remains concerned about the extent of the problem.

In 2004-5 West Sussex firefighters were sent out 13,000 times, of which 355 turned out to be pranks.

The number of malicious calls in East Sussex has fallen from 512 in 2003-4 to 372 in 2004-5.

In Brighton, Hove and Roedean there were 260 prank calls in 2003-4 and 177 last year.