FALSE alarms at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport are costing taxpayers more than £60,000 a year.

Between April last year and March this year South Wales Fire and Rescue Service was called out to the hospital 57 times after alarms were triggered falsely.

Causes of the false alarms ranged from technical problems to patients smoking and staff making toast.

The service says three engines, costing £300 per callout, are sent out each time, as well as a hydraulic platform, costing about £200. This means the latest bill was a staggering £62,700.

A spokesman for the fire service said: "The service receives a relatively high number of false alarms (unwanted fire signals) which emanate from automatic fire detection systems.

"In the case of the Royal Gwent, it is our policy to mobilise three fire appliances and one hydraulic platform because of the inherent risk present in a hospital.

"Whether the alarm is a result of accidental actuation or a fault in the system, we will still respond - we don't take any chances in the case of hospitals.

"But we are proactively working with the owners and managers of premises to reduce the number of automatic fire alarms."

A spokesman for the hospital said the majority of the callouts were caused by technical problems. But as it was impossible to monitor every space, it was "conceivable" that some were caused by patients having a sneaky cigarette and by staff making toast.

"The safety of patients is paramount and fire regulations now quite rightly require that every room, corridor and space is alarmed," he said.

"There are often technical teething problems with sophisticated devices that result in a callout, but these are being steadily reduced. We have managed a 50 per cent reduction in false alarm call-outs over the past two years and will continue to work with the fire brigade to reduce these further." Newport East AM John Griffiths, deputy minister for health, said he was confident the hospital would work hard to bring the cost down.

"Every pound counts," he said. "The hospital will work hard to ensure this unnecessary expense is eradicated. But things like this are unavoidable at times, making it difficult to deal with."