Firefighters were called to a false alarm yesterday.

They were told a barn was ablaze.

However, when they got there it turned out to be some plants being ’burned off’ on a farm.

A spokesman said: ’As a service we only have limited resources and attending false alarms like this could potentially result in a delayed response to attending actual emergencies where we are needed.

’When people see smoke they will assume that there is a fire needing fire service attendance so if you are planning to burn off please call the emergency services joint control room on 697327 and inform them what you are intending to do so that we are not mobilised to a non-emergency situation.’