HARROW was deprived of fire cover for 13 half-days in June as engines were diverted to other duties.

The London Fire Brigade took the vehicles off active duty, or "runs", under what it calls "strategic resourcing".

But the firefighters' union claims the aim is to cut the service and it warns lives are being put at risk.

While they were being used for training or for fire risk visits, emergency cover in the borough had to be provided by fire stations elsewhere.

The borough has two fire engines, one based at the station in Honeypot Lane, Stanmore, and the other at the station in Pinner Road, North Harrow.

"Strategic resourcing" means that they are regularly sent to cover gaps in Wembley, Ealing and Mill Hill, leaving the borough with only one engine on active duty.

Fire Brigades Union spokesman Yussef Timms said: "Machines are being take off runs and used for training and community safety purposes.

"It's not an ideal situation because where I work in Brent, for example, if we go and cover Hendon while we are on strategic resource then there is no one at our station covering us and that could cost someone their life.

"There is an attitude in the London Fire Brigade of trying to scale down services and strategic resourcing is one way they can do that.

"They took ten engines out of service last year."

According to the brigade's own figures, 63.37 per cent of fire engines called out to incidents in 2005-06 arrived within five minutes, and 91.67 per cent within eight minutes.

A brigade spokesperson said: "As part of the continuing modernisation of the fire service, we announced plans in November 2004 to find more structured ways to make sure that our firefighters are able to do three things: get to more incidents faster, carry out more home fire risk assessments and be able to do more training so that they are safer at fires and other incidents.

"Those plans are now being implemented and will make Londoners and firefighters safer and better protected."

This month, fire cover in Harrow was reduced on July 2, 12, 14, 16 and 19 as a result of "strategic resourcing".

It will happen again on July 21, 23, 25, 27 and 29.