A POLICE and fire brigade operation is being launched to catch arsonists responsible for keeping Teesside at the top of a national league table for deliberate fires.

The emergency services will pool their knowledge of fires and criminal intelligence to net the culprits responsible for more than 80 per cent of all fires on Teesside.

Bob Scott, Hartlepool district manager for Cleveland Fire Brigade, said: "Partnership working has reduced arson in some areas to almost half, and three of the four districts in the brigade area have seen a significant reduction in the number of car fires attended in the last year.

"We are now planning to introduce a scheme whereby the police and brigade work together to identify and follow up incidents which may be crime-related."

Planning on the scheme is almost complete.

Fire brigade and police analysts are already identifying blackspots and trends in arson attacks.

A pilot scheme will be launched in Hartlepool and will be extended to the surrounding districts if successful.

Fire investigator Detective Constable Graham Thompson, of the Arson Investigation Unit, said: "The brigade at Hartlepool are going to look at fires in their area, and the police will look at their intelligence in the same areas on anti-social behaviour, thefts and burglaries, and see if that information links up."

A partnership between the police and brigade to tackle stolen vehicles, which often end up being set alight, has shown positive results since it began in March.

Mark Whelan, the brigade's director of operations and community fire safety, said a decrease in fires in all districts was the result of proactive community fire safety.

He said: "We need to use everything at our disposal to beat the downward cycle associated with empty buildings, which often leads to arson.

"As well as going down the legal route to tackle this problem, we would also ask owners of empty property to disguise the fact by keeping the front of the property and garden tidy and board up the back if necessary.