Community safety officers from Central Scotland Fire and Rescue Service will be going out on bicycles to areas where there is a problem with fires being deliberately started or malicious calls being made.

Statistics show young people are to blame for most cases of wilful fireraising and senior management hope high visibility patrols by officers on mountain bikes will reduce the problem.

Firefighters will be able to talk to youngsters and highlight the dangers – loss of life, danger to property and risk to fire crews.

The service is the first in Scotland to introduce the community project, which will run for six months before being reviewed, although it runs successfully down south.

It will operate across the Falkirk area, as well as in Stirling and Clackmannan.

A fire and rescue service spokesman said that, in the first quarter of this year alone, there were 466 fires set deliberately, 34 of these where valuable property was involved.

Director of service delivery Tommy Mann said: "Deliberately set fires and malicious calls place a significant strain on our resources. We must reduce the number of these types of incidents before life is lost either as a result of a deliberate fire, or our resources being diverted to such a fire and not being available when needed somewhere else."