HERITAGE champions have clashed with fire chiefs over moves to reduce the number of fire engines in York city centre.

North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service organised a seminar at the historic Merchant Adventurers Hall yesterday to try to reassure conservationists that the city’s 1,500 medieval buildings would not be put at increased risk of destruction, but the critics said they remained deeply worried.

Senior fire officers said they wanted to explain the changes, as well as listen to the views of conservationists and the owners of York’s medieval timber-framed buildings and provide reassurance.

They stressed that the relocation of a fire engine and platform ladder from the Clifford Street station to Huntington fire station had already been agreed, and they were only consulting at the moment on proposals to shut Clifford Street and build a new, smaller station in Kent Street.

They said there would only be a very slight increase in the time taken by firefighters to get to a city centre property. At the same time, there would be a significant improvement in tackling fires in communities to the north of the city such as Huntington and Clifton Moor, and in dealing with road accidents. They said the biggest risk of fatalities in fires was elderly people living alone in suburban homes, not wealthy people living in historic city centre properties, but this drew protests.

Philip Thake, the chief executive of York Conservation Trust, said it had about 80 residents living in flats above shops, many timber-framed, right in the centre of the city, who were extremely vulnerable to fire.

York Civic Trust director Peter Brown claimed: “To contemplate a reduction in cover from two fire engines and the ladder to only one engine is a fatally-flawed idea and cannot stand up to any sort of rational scrutiny.”

Critics asked why it was necessary to leave Clifford Street at all, saying the station served its purpose well, but they were told it was “not fit for purpose,” with regular flooding, inadequate space and prison vans passing through the centre of the complex to get to the back of the magistrates court.