NORTH Yorkshire Police's underwater search unit has been axed.

Senior officers defended the decision to use frogmen from Northumbria Police, saying the switch would save tens of thousands of pounds.

But former members of the county's Underwater Search Uunit (UWSU), based in York, reacted with fury to the news - and warned response times would be longer. They said if a body was spotted in a canal in Selby, it would probably have to wait hours to be recovered before a team arrived from Newcastle.

One experienced officer, who asked not to be named, said: "I think this decision will come back and bite them. "Northumbria is already covering Cleveland and Durham, so you can't expect them to provide the same service as when North Yorkshire had its own unit."

The officer said the North Yorkshire unit, believed to have been set up about 40 years ago, was called to about 40 incidents a year. They included drownings and searches for missing people in rivers. It recovered as many as 20 bodies from rivers every year, he added, and protracted searches would now "end up costing the force a lot of money".

He said the unit had also worked as search experts on land in rape and murder cases, often helping other regional forces, but had been scrapped amid pressures to get more "bobbies on the beat" to meet tough new crime targets.

North Yorkshire Police said the new search contract would save money - and expand services available to the force. A spokesman said under the deal, Northumbria Police would provide diving services for North Yorkshire Police and offer marine capability.

Assistant Chief Constable David Collins said: "Regional sharing of specialist resources is the future of many aspects of policing.

"This is a prime example: our own underwater search unit costs nearly £100,000 a year and makes an average of 13 operational dives a year.

"New members have to be highly trained at considerable cost, and all divers' skills must be updated with practice dives and with training courses that must be paid for and which take them away from their regular duties.

"The alternative is for a very much smaller sum we can have the services of a Northumbrian team with a high reputation. The York-based UWSU - a sergeant and six constables - can concentrate full-time on other duties, meaning extra front-line policing for North Yorkshire."

Police stressed the new set-up would not impact on rescue or responses to emergency situations.

"They are not an emergency unit, their job is to recover items or, sadly, bodies," added Mr Collins.

Joyce Bowes, whose late husband Walter was one of the founder members of the frogman unit and whose obituary was carried in the Evening Press last week, said he would have been "saddened by the decision".

Updated: 10:08 Wednesday, April 20, 2005