They have asked the people of Whitby to hand over their scrap vehicles rather than take them to a scrapyard or have them towed away.

Mark Naylor, the station manager, said an increasing proportion of their work is involved in rescuing people from cars involved in road accidents and they need to know how to free them safely.

He said: "While owners can get some money for their old cars from scrapyards, I feel there might be some members of the public who will willingly donate their cars if they knew it helped the firefighters carry out their work and improve their service.

"We aim to run road traffic collision events in the town centre because it shows people the amount of resources it takes to deal with an incident and it allows our personnel to pass on safety messages."

The training needs to be carried out at local fire stations even though the service has a central training centre elsewhere in the county.

Whitby Fire Station has an agreement with a local authorised treatment facility which would pick up a car and deliver it to the fire station.

A vehicle must be accompanied by its DVLA form V5 and keys.

Arrangements for collection can be made with the fire station on (01947) 824080.