A FAMILY of six was woken by firefighters banging on their door after a faulty smoke alarm sparked fears from a neighbour that the house was ablaze.

Fire officers are promoting the importance of waking family members if a smoke alarm sounds after the residents failed to get up when the device went off.

Three engines from Blackburn and Accrington were called to a property in Peridot Close, Blackburn, at 3.50am on Saturday when a neighbour came home and heard the alarm sounding.

Officers quickly realised that there was no fire at the home and that the residents inside were all asleep.

After speaking to the two adults and four children who lived there they discovered that one of the young boys had heard the alarm but had not thought anything was wrong. He had then gone back to bed without waking his parents.

Watch manager Steve Johnson, from Blackburn fire station, said: "We treated this as a critical incident because we were concerned that there were people inside what could be a potentially burning building.

"It turned out to be a false alarm, but we would rather have 100 false alarms than have to pull dead bodies from a house. If you hear a fire alarm sounding in your property you must wake everyone else up if they are still asleep."

He added: "The smoke alarm had gone off because of faulty batteries."