ARSONISTS are to be tackled by a new crime- fighting team.

Home Office funding of £83,000 is expected to be made available next year, to allow a joint service, three-member team to become fully operational.

Cleveland Police scenes-of-crime expert, Detective Constable Graham Thompson, Cleveland Fire Brigade Station Officer George Crooks, and brigade photographer Mike Todd, make up the Arson Investigation Unit, the first of its kind in the UK.

Their target is to reduce arson attacks by a quarter over the next five years.

The three have already set to work setting up a "common language" to be immediately understood by police and fire services.

Their expertise was used to establish a link between two recent fires in South Bank, Middlesbrough.

Mr Crooks said: "This is the way forward, but the success of the team will depend on the resources we get. It's a common sense approach to arson and deliberate fire investigation, and it will expand to bring in psychological profilers and mapping systems, looking at where, when and at what time incidents are occurring.''

Arsons cost Britain £25m a day, and the Home Office wants a 30 per cent reduction by 2009.