West Yorkshire's firefighters are attending more incidents despite constant cuts in funding and staffing.

More than 200 people were rescued from fires by the county's brigade between April 1, 1999 and March 31, and fire deaths were below average - which fire chiefs have attributed to successful fire education.

But a once 2,000-strong West Yorkshire brigade has been reduced to a staff of less than 1,700 during the last decade.

West Yorkshire's Deputy Chief Fire Officer Kevin Arbuthnot said: "We are attending more fires, making more rescues from road traffic accidents and making more community fire safety visits - every activity level has increased but we have less people to deal with them and less part-time firefighters.

"But despite losing funding our strategies are continuing and lives are being saved."

Although the number of malicious calls fell dramatically from 8,088 to 2,780 in just three years, Mr Arbuthnot revealed four and a half per cent of all calls received by the brigade last month were malicious and the brigade had to attend every one.

"The Government wants us to lower these figures, we want to lower these figures but because of the funding mechanism we lose money if we do," he said.

At the moment the fire service is working alongside the police to reduce the number of arson attacks on vehicles.

Approximately 87 per cent of all car fires have been attributed to arson so far this year.

Figures from the Fire Authority's annual review for 1999/2000 show the brigade's control room in Birkenshaw handled almost 90,000 emergency calls and turned appliances out to 42,939 incidents - 4,679 more than in the previous year.

Major causes of fire included 7,413 arson incidents, 541 chip pan fires, 411 cases of children playing with fire or matches and 83 fires in schools or colleges.

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