The NSW Rural Fire Service has endorsed the central city park as a Neighbourhood Safer Place along with East Albury’s Alexandra Park, North Albury’s Bunton Park, Lavington’s Urana Road Oval and the Springdale Heights baseball diamond.

Neighbourhood Safer Place was a term developed following this year’s Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria and, in October, Rural Fire Service administrators were ordered to produce suitable refuge locations.

Yesterday the Albury Council sites, which also include the Table Top Community Centre, were posted on the fire service’s website along with the only Greater Hume safer place, the Jindera football ground.

Eleven sites in Corowa Shire earmarked as refuges and five each in Berrigan and Tumbarumba are yet to be officially accepted.

Rural Fire Service assistant commissioner operations Rob Rogers said there were issues with “data quality” which had to be resolved before Corowa, Berrigan and Tumbarumba sites could be listed.

“We’ve got to assess these from a safety point of view, so we’ve got to make sure the data is all right,” Mr Rogers said.

He said the building sites had been chosen on the basis of them being at least 139m from bushland, while the outdoor locations needed to be a minimum of 310m from major vegetation.

Albury-based Rural Fire Service team manager George Alexander said the proximity of West Albury’s parks to bushland had ruled them out.

“They’re a place of last resort they can go to and just wait there while the fire goes through,” Mr Alexander said.

“Once the fire goes through then they can go back to their houses.

“If they unfortunately lose their house in the bushfire then they can go to an evacuation centre.”

Mr Rogers said signs would be erected at the locations indicating they have been officially designated as safer places and a public awareness campaign would be staged once they were all listed on the website rfs.nsw.gov.au.