But the Independent Police Complaints Commission has identified lessons to be learned following the death of 51-year-old Gerald Smith from Middleton.

It ruled that the officers had been put into a difficult and dangerous situation due to a lack of accurate information.

The watchdog has made a number of recommendations to West Yorkshire Police which focus on providing frontline officers with more accurate intelligence when attending incidents.

Mr Smith died on April 18, 2006, three days after dousing himself in petrol and setting himself alight after two officers tried to arrest him for breach of bail conditions.

The IPCC said Mr Smith was experiencing marital difficulties and was suffering from mental health problems. He had been charged with harassing his wife, and had breached conditions of his bail by continuing to contact her.

Police were made aware that Mr Smith had threatened, during conversations with his wife and brother, to commit suicide by setting himself on fire.

A member of police staff asked for that information to be put on the police computer systems on April 11, 2006 and Mrs Smith was advised an officer would visit her. The information was incorrectly graded as requiring only a telephone response, which did not reflect the seriousness of the risk Mr Smith posed to himself and officers.

The person who graded the information has received advice and it has been recommended that West Yorkshire Police put systems in place to ensure regular checks are made of how logs are graded. The IPCC said the officers sent to arrest Mr Smith were not made aware of Mr Smith's threats, which meant they were dispatched to a potentially dangerous situation without key information.

Nicholas Long, IPCC commissioner for Yorkshire and Humberside, said: "While it is clear that Mr Smith chose to take his own life and the probability is that nobody could have prevented him, it is also clear that a lack of co-ordination left two officers facing a highly-dangerous situation. Information was contained in West Yorkshire Police computer systems about the risks presented by Mr Smith, but all of this was not readily available to the officers.

"This was a very traumatic incident for everyone involved, but when confronted with a man who had set himself on fire the two officers acted professionally and bravely in attempting to save him."