CELLS at a North Yorkshire town's police station will be reopened to stop York officers acting as glorified "taxi drivers".

The £338,000 short-term scheme - agreed yesterday by the force's police authority - will see prisoners transported to Selby at peak times, to relieve pressure on York.

Officers have complained they were often no more than glorified cabbies, forced to spend more time ferrying those arrested to cells at weekends rather than policing the streets.

On busy shifts, such as Friday and Saturday evenings, patrols sometimes have to take prisoners as far as Northallerton and Skipton to find vacant cells.

To ease the burden, authority members have now agreed to increase custody staff by five sergeants and four detention officers and deploy them to the cells at Selby, between 10pm on Thursdays until 6am on Mondays.

In a report to members, Chief Constable Della Cannings said: "The increase of staff at Selby will have a greater impact on delivering operational policing, whilst additional dedicated staff will ensure a uniformity of standards and assist the delivery of centralised custody throughout North Yorkshire Police."

Ms Cannings said the long-term solution was to build a new cell block at York police station.

Its potential cost has yet to be drawn up, but the overflow facility would require a minimum of ten cells.

Five years ago, Selby police station's cells were downgraded due to cutbacks, and prisoners could only spend six hours there. Since then they have been opened occasionally for special operations and busy periods, but all longer-term prisoners must be brought to York police station, which has 24 cells.

Selby has six cells for men, two for women and one youth cell.

Police authority member, Coun Jim Snowball welcomed the approval of the £338,000 scheme.

"I think it will be very helpful to the management of crime in Selby district in particular," he told the Evening Press.

"We can only keep striving to make improvements."

:: In police custody

On average, North Yorkshire Police deals with about 72 detainees per day.

Sixty four of them go these centralised custody suites.

Detainees per day:

York - 29

Scarborough - 14

Harrogate - 12

Northallerton - 9

Updated: 10:56 Saturday, July 30, 2005