Memorandum by Mountain Rescue in England
and Wales (SAR 11)
NATIONAL INTEGRATION
The UK SAR Strategic Committee's "Search
and Rescue Framework for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland" was published by the Maritime and Coastguard
Agency (MCA) in June 2002. This document sets out, at a strategic
level the inter-agency co-ordination of all those involved in
the provision of search and rescue (SAR) services within the UK
Search and Rescue Region.
Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MR-EW) has
been and is an active member of the UK SAR Operators Group. It
has contributed to all the Working Groups established by the Operators
Group to consider specific problems. Currently, MR-EW provides
the Chair of the Communications Working Group.
The current UK SAR structure, established in
2000, provides a vital forum for the resolutions of national issues
at a strategic level. It provides an essential link between land,
maritime and aviation SAR components and strongly encourages moves
to a more fully joined up SAR, The active support and work of
the MCA is of great significance in the continuing development
of SAR within the UK.
ROLE
Mountain Rescue in England and Wales is provided
by over 2,000 highly trained volunteers, on call and able to respond
immediately 24 hours per day, 365 days a year—whatever the
weather.
Mountain Rescue teams are a community based
resource and their assistance is being sought on an increasing
basis for incidents in rural and urban areas as well as the traditional
mountain incidents. Mountain Rescue takes the leading role in
searching for, stabilising and evacuating; missing elderly persons,
children and young persons, persons who have threatened or have
self harmed, the mentally ill, people with learning difficulties
who have wandered away from their home base, and the rescue of
injured people in rural, moorland, fell and mountain environment.
Teams support their local community in times
of extreme weather; transporting district nurses and doctors to
home visits; helping Ambulance paramedics to reach casualties
who otherwise could not be reached; forest and moorland fires;
animal rescues; light aircraft and major plane crashes; murder
investigations and care of rare bird nesting sites in remote areas.
Mountain Rescue are included in the major incident
plans of the Police area's in which they operate and a close liaison
is maintained both operationally and for administration.
ORGANISATION IN
ENGLAND AND
WALES
Mountain Rescue has since 1982 been a 999 Emergency
Service. It is run 100%—by unpaid volunteers (some who may
lose pay), at all levels in the organisation whether locally,
regionally or nationally. No money raised by the organisation
is used to support employees or their overheads. All money spent
maintains the service. The organisation of Mountain Rescue in
England and Wales has a three tier structure:
National
Mountain Rescue—England and Wales (MREW),
is the co-ordinating body for the Mountain Rescue Teams, who work
through eight regional bodies. It is a voluntary body and a registered
charity. It provides a forum for national issues on mountain rescue
and it liaises with the various government departments involved
with search and rescue. It provides national training and conferences.
MREW is a member of the United Kingdom Search and Rescue Committee
Operators Group (hosted by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency).
Regional
The regional bodies are a forum for the co-ordination
of joint search and rescue operations, liaison with the local
statutory authorities and other local search and rescue agencies.
Each is a member of the MREW.
Local
The provision of mountain rescue service to
local areas is provided by over 50 teams, the majority are independent
charities, run by volunteers. Members are competent all-weather
mountaineers who then undergo rigorous training in search techniques,
cliff and crag rescue, casualty handling, first aid, communications,
off-road and blue light driving, with selected members trained
in incident management. Each team is a member of one of the eight
regional organisations.
RESOURCING, EQUIPMENT
AND TRAINING
OF MOUNTAIN
RESCUE
Resourcing
Mountain Rescue relies on the voluntary ethos
that exists in the United Kingdom. The resourcing model has changed
in the last few years. There is a higher turnover taking place
in teams and therefore increased training to maintain the high
level of service which Mountain Rescue provides. In some areas
recruitment is becoming more difficult.
We also have a situation within Mountain Rescue
and we know within other voluntary organisations including those
other emergency services, where personnel are less available during
their working hours to attend callouts. There appears to be less
commitment by employers to voluntary public service than in previous
years. Mountain Rescue has responded to this challenge through
the use of technology, by calling multiple teams to attend those
incidents, where from experience low numbers are available from
within a single team.
Cost of running Mountain Rescue to equip and train
The teams, regional bodies and the MRC are all
financially independent. Annual average running costs from financial
records can be between £15,000 to £80,000, plus the
costs of any capital purchases, such as provision of vehicles,
a rescue base or major equipment.
This is not the true cost of running Mountain
Rescue as many costs are hidden as they are met by team members
providing their own equipment for their operational role, paying
their own travelling costs to training and incidents and supporting
the administration costs of running the charity such as telephone
calls, postage and printing.
Therefore using the financial accounts of these
organisations shows an artificially low indication of the cost
of running Mountain Rescue. An example of this is where some Mountain
Rescue teams provide waterproof clothing, but in other teams it
is expected that members provide their own clothing. This is because
many teams have very little money and in many instances do not
have the funding base or the volunteer time to be able to obtain
the level of funding required to properly equip team members from
team finances—they, instead, rely on the goodwill of team
members to provide their own clothing and equipment.
RELATIONSHIP WITHIN
THE SEARCH
AND RESCUE
COMMUNITY
RAF
Whilst recognising the primary role of the Ministry
of Defence in the provision of Aeronautical Search and Rescue,
the civilian mountain rescue teams in the majority of aircraft
crashes arrive on scene a number of hours before the nearest RAF
mountain rescue team. This situation has been further exemplified
by the reduction, in 2004, of RAF mountain rescue teams to four,
to cover the whole of the UK. Civilian mountain rescue, because
of their proximity to the mountains now provide the primary response
to aircraft crashes.
Police
Although the Police service has the lead role
in the coordination of land search and rescue, very often due
to the specialist skills of Mountain Rescue and limitation of
resources in Police forces missing person searches are managed
and conducted by Mountain Rescue.
In some police forces there has been a lack
of understanding of the relationship between Mountain Rescue and
the police. This has led to some police forces asking the local
Mountain rescue team to sign agreements specifying the service
provided and stipulating conditions on the use of blue lights
and is in many cases due to a lack of knowledge and understanding
that Mountain Rescue is a 999 emergency service in its own right
as is the Fire Brigade and Ambulance. This lack of understanding
probably exists within many colleagues in the other emergency
services. It has also been our experience that many government
departments do not know that we are a 999 emergency service.
Ambulance
Mountain Rescue has also found over the years,
where there has been an increase in the skill level of ambulance
personnel, firstly to emergency medical technician and now to
paramedic there has been an increase in the number of occasions
where ambulance crews operate in hostile environments, for which
they are neither occupationally competent, as they are not trained
for this environment or equipped to deal with the conditions found.
This has resulted in Mountain Rescue and Cave Rescue teams having
to rescue not only the person who is injured but also to provide
assistance to the ambulance crew. We are also aware that a number
of claims have been made by ambulance personnel against their
employer for failing to provide adequate arrangements for health
and safety.
Air Ambulances
We have also noted the same conditions applying
to technicians and paramedics who are the crews of air ambulances.
Whilst this is a magnificent resource in being able to reach injured
and ill persons in remote locations, there have been a number
of instances where the air ambulance has been called and dispatched
to mountain incidents without any recourse or calling of Mountain
Rescue teams who have detailed knowledge of the area, the terrain
and the weather conditions at the time.
This has lead to a number of incidents where
the helicopter has been dispatched and because of weather or ground
conditions, has not been able to get anywhere near the casualty
and only then with sometimes over an hour delay, has a Mountain
Rescue team been called. Clearly an unsatisfactory situation.
This has been taken up on a local, regional and UK SAR basis.
Improvement of this situation has been achieved with on-going
work in other areas.
EFFECTIVE SEARCH
AND RESCUE
CO -ORDINATION
ARRANGEMENTS
Within Mountain Rescue the organisational structure
has allowed for effective arrangements of search and rescue operations.
The regional structure has provided a facility for joint callout
systems using various forms of technology ie paging systems, sms.
For major incidents, the well established inter
regional callout systems are well established, with principle
officers of each region meeting at a national level twice each
year and a national team leaders meeting held once each year.
CHALLENGES FACING
MOUNTAIN RESCUE
There are a number of challenges facing Mountain
Rescue.
Resources
With the recognition in the voluntary community
that it is becoming more difficult to obtain and sustain volunteers.
This is one of the challenges that will not only face Mountain
Rescue but other emergency services that rely on the goodwill
of volunteerism. The recruitment and retention of personnel will
require different human resource management strategies to be put
into place.
Other voluntary search and rescue units
Over the last few years there have been a number
of new search and rescue units that have set-up who have no affiliation
with either Mountain Rescue or our sister organisation the Association
of Lowland Search and Rescue (ALSAR). Many of these units have
set up without consultation, risk assessment or need analysis,
undertaken in areas where there is a well established and efficient
Mountain Rescue team.
The problem that faces Mountain Rescue is that
these teams have no national training standards, probably a lack
of adequate insurance and therefore there is a risk that these
teams could have a negative impact on voluntary search and rescue.
Offers have been extended for these organisations to amalgamate
within the Mountain Rescue community but usually these are not
accepted, therefore these organisations often work for a number
of years in Mountain Rescue areas slowly going into decline, as
there are not enough callouts to retain their resources. These
unofficial teams can sometimes have a negative impact both by
complaining they were not called and also when involved in an
incident and they provide less than an adequate service, the whole
of mountain rescue is "tarred with the same brush".
Insurance
Mountain rescue has a number of insurance policies;
public liability, trustee and personal accident insurance.
The personal accident insurance is provided
by each police force. This has been a concern for a number of
years in Mountain Rescue due to the different polices and therefore
inconsistency of coverage for Mountain Rescue volunteers. Due
to the lack of involvement in this policy in many instances the
insurance policy which has been purchased by the Police, has not
met our requirements and in 2004 it was found that Mountain Rescue
had no coverage for flying in helicopters which were not licensed
passenger aircraft. (ie we were not covered for MOD Search and
Rescue and Coastguard helicopters). Mountain Rescue is currently
working with the ACPO representative to try and persuade ACPO
that the purchase of a central policy would make sense, but this
is going to be a difficult process and the level of confidence
for achieving this is low.
Blue Light and Siren Issues
Mountain Rescue teams use both "Ambulances"
and "vehicles used for an Ambulance Purpose" however
this has been questioned by a number of police forces principally
where the teams have been operating in the lowland areas where
we provide a search and rescue service.
This issue was taken up with the Department
for Transport in March 2003, but as yet Mountain Rescue has not
been added in to the appropriate sections of the regulations to
clarify the use of blue lights and sirens by Mountain Rescue,
a 999 Emergency Service. We therefore have the situation where
the Police and Ambulance travel to an incident using Blue Lights
and Sirens, arrive on scene and then wait for a Mountain Rescue
team to arrive.
A recent example of this attitude was the response
to Boscastle. All the emergency services were briefed on the critical
situation in the village at the time they were called and all
traveled to Boscastle using lights and sirens. The team leader
of the Mountain Rescue team who responded with two fully crewed
vehicles, was reprimanded by the Police for the use of blue lights
and sirens.
Financial
Although Mountain Rescue provides a high level
of professionalism it is very much working on a hand to mouth
principle in the funding of this organisation. This makes it so
much more difficult for Mountain Rescue to look at its long term
strategy.
— Cost of new equipment is a constant
strain on teams' financial resources—a mountain stretcher
costs £2,500, first response vehicle costs £35,000,
and control vehicle costs £45,000.
— Increased competition for fund-raising
due to the number of new charities being created annually.
— Increased operational costs due to
more callouts as activities become more diversified. Since 1999
the number of callouts has increased by over 125 per annum to
a total of 1,078 incidents in 2002, saving a total of 1,117 lives.
Total volunteers' hours expended on search and rescue during 2002
was over 60,000. Training time was in addition to this.
— The small annual grant provided to
the MRC from the Health Authorities has reduced by 30%.
— Increase burden on team members to
spend their free time raising the funds necessary to keep the
teams going, placing pressure on the balance of home life.
— Financial burden on many members
as many teams do not supply the mountain rescue kit they require
to be operational (approximately £1,000), pager, fuel to
meetings and callouts, and administration costs.
What improvements could be made to the UK's Search
and Rescue arrangements?
As in other countries voluntary search and rescue
in the UK provides a vital role. A centralised insurance policy
throughout the UK would provide stability among the volunteer
community. Currently, a lot of time and effort is being expended
in resolving this issue and this improvement would provide a vast
improvement to the welfare and confidence of the volunteer search
and rescue community.
Funding is another improvement that could be
made. There is a huge disparity between what Mountain Rescue in
Scotland receives and the rest of the UK. This is because in 2003
the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland secured funding from
the Scottish Parliament now amounting to over £500,000 per
year.
Mountain Rescue in England and Wales would require
funding assistance at the three levels of the organisation, examples
are:
National: equipment development and research,
training courses and conferences, development and strategic costs,
insurance, administration and meetings.
Regional: regional training, meetings
and administration, travel and accommodation for attending national
meetings and training.
Teams: personal protective clothing and
equipment, mountain rescue equipment, vehicles and their running
costs and members travel, radio equipment and repairs, phone service,
computing facilities and the base costs of electricity, gas, phone,
building and building maintenance and repairs.
Currently we are campaigning to Government and
an All Party working group has been established by Dai Havard,
MP for Merthyr Tydfil, to investigate funding for Mountain Rescue
in England and Wales. Our goal is to obtain funding in parity
with our colleagues in Scotland, but taking account the different
organisational structure and different services provided by Mountain
Rescue in England and Wales.
The table below shows the difference between
level of funding in England and Wales to Scotland.
| Description of Funding
| 2002 Scotland £ | 2003 Scotland £
| 2003 England and Wales £ |
2004 Scotland £ |
| Provision of new radio equipment for the new integrated communications system for Land Search and Rescue in UK
| — | 300,000 | Some radio equipment provided by Police Authorities
| 180,000
Communication and control vehicle provided
|
| General grant aid to support operational costs of 28 mountain rescue organisations
| 100,000/annum | 400,000/annum
| — | 500,000/annum |
| Equipment funding from Health Department (Thro two Trusts in England)
| 80,000/annum | 80,000/annum
| 20,000/annum | 80,000/annum
|
| Equipment funding from the Welsh Assembly |
— | — | 10,000/annum
| — |
| | |
| |
Adequate funding will certainly reduce the amount of volunteer
time required to provide the world class service that Mountain
Rescue in England and Wales provides to the communities it serves,
thus concentrating the volunteer effort on training for the required
responses to incidents.
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