RESIDENTS in four North Yorkshire towns will wait an average of almost eight minutes longer for a fire engine to turn up to a blaze if controversial cuts are made, a union claims.

The Fire Brigades Union said it had carried out its own analysis of the impact of plans to replace some North Yorkshire fire engines with 'tactical response vehicles' (TRVs), crewed by only two or three firefighters.

It said full time crews which currently manned fire engines in Northallerton, Ripon, Malton and Tadcaster, during the day would be partially replaced by part-timers, who would take longer to get to incidents because they would first have to get to the station.

FBU Brigade secretary Steve Howley claimed 'misleading' figures on a fire service website fact-sheet suggested the average increase in the time taken to get to a fire during the day was 3 minutes, 18 seconds.

He said the FBU had made a freedom of information request for mobilisation times for incidents throughout 2014 at one of the four fire stations.

“The information obtained showed that in 2014, when the part time and full time staff were mobilised to the same jobs at the same time during the period of 0800 to 1800, on average the part time fire engine was 7mins 45 seconds slower at getting to the incidents," he said.

"Having fully crewed, fully resourced fire engines immediately available to respond to incidents is vital when providing an adequate response to incidents within these areas."

He urged the public to visit the union's website www.no2firecuts.com to 'see the truth' behind how each fire station would be affected by the cuts.

But area manager Owen Hayward, head of risk management, claimed the proposed introduction of TRVs would not result in any changes to attendance times.

"The mixed crewing proposals would mean that the time for first fire engine to respond to an incident would be the same during the day as it is currently during the night," he said.

"Unlike the second fire engine at those stations, which would need to wait for four staff to respond to station, under the mixed crewing proposals only one or two additional part-time staff would need to respond to station.

"The data NYFRS used was for five years, and included all incidents and fire engines attending them. The figures requested by the FBU was more limited set of data and does not show the full picture."