THE founder of the York Rescue Boat said he hoped a recent report would encourage closer work between the charity and City of York Council.

Dave Benson set up the York Rescue Boat about 18 months ago, and it became a registered charity earlier this year. Having raised thousands of pounds to buy a boat and patrol the Ouse during busy periods, the service aims to be up and running within months.

A report by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), said "local knowledge and efforts should be built upon to limit future preventable harm", and a public consultation showed there was "support for community schemes such as Street Angels, safer routes home and charity rescue boat".

It concluded: "Support for a river safety boat should be considered. This should be considered supplemental to the search and rescue/flood capacity provided by York Fire and Rescue Service."

Mr Benson said the charity aimed "purely to compliment the great work done by the existing emergency services", but said he had been excluded from previous council meetings and river safety talks.

He said: "We wanted to set up a meeting with the council to discuss our role in further meetings and our intentions of providing a patrol and rescue boat, however the council refused to talk about our patrol and rescue boat at that proposed meeting.

"We haven’t received any formal or official notification from the council regarding how we propose our patrol and rescue boat would safely operate."

Steve Waddington, assistant director of housing and community safety, said the council was "considering the value of a river rescue boat", and the meetings Mr Benson referred to were focused on "immediate actions to be implemented and not what could happen in the future".

He said: "We are pleased to hear that the charity’s fund-raising is going well, however no details of how it proposes a boat would safely operate has been provided, so once this is submitted, discussions can take place with the statutory authorities to see what role it can take."

Mr Benson said he looked forward "to a positive working relationship to achieve our common goals in river safety", and still hoped to meet with the council in the near future.

He said: "We will be happy to share our plans with CYC before or when we become operational on the river.

"We are drawing from the many years of experience that our volunteers have had in the military, search and rescue, NHS, police and fire and rescue to create an organisation and crew that will be fully qualified and trained to deliver a river patrol/search and rescue and community flood assistance service to York and surrounding areas.”