The House | Building resilience is a team effort

A stretcher box below Great Gable, Alamy

5 min read43 min

One rescue from the Lake District captures why volunteer search and rescue matters. A group of girls had just finished their GCSEs and set off on what should have been a three or four-day journey across the fells. As they reached the top end of Ennerdale, a major thunderstorm hit. Streams that would normally have been easy to step across were suddenly transformed into dangerous torrents.

One of the girls was swept off her feet and carried downstream. Thankfully, her friends managed to grab hold of her and pull her out. But the group was left stranded, soaked through and trapped between flooded watercourses in one of the most remote parts of Cumbria.

Mountain rescue volunteers were called out. They reached the group, escorted them safely across the flooded becks and into shelter. Nobody would have blamed them for calling their parents and ending the trip. Instead, after talking it through together, they decided to continue.

That moment says something important about the outdoors. It builds confidence, resilience and judgement, particularly in young people. We should want more people to experience it safely, not fewer.

But it also illustrates something Westminster too often overlooks: when things go wrong, the public rightly expects help to be there. Increasingly, that help comes from volunteer search and rescue teams.

Across the UK, volunteer search and rescue teams support police forces, ambulance services, fire and rescue services and other partners in some of their most demanding incidents. They search for vulnerable missing people, rescue injured walkers and climbers, respond during floods and severe weather, and provide specialist capabilities that have become an indispensable part of Britain’s emergency response system.

Yet while the public assumes help will arrive when it is needed most, far less attention is paid to how that capability is sustained. That matters because resilience has risen rapidly up the political agenda. Westminster increasingly talks about emergency preparedness, civil contingencies and public safety. But one of Britain’s most valuable emergency response assets has too often remained on the margins of those discussions.

Volunteer search and rescue does not have a capability problem. It has a recognition and sustainability problem.

Advertisement

Government already relies on volunteer search and rescue. Public policy has simply been slower to catch up with that reality.

The recent wildfires in the Peak District and in the Cairngorms in the Highlands are a timely reminder. Mountain rescue teams have worked alongside fire and rescue services, providing specialist personnel, local knowledge and increasingly sophisticated drone capability. Few people associate mountain rescue with wildfire response, yet without that support the task facing fire services would have been significantly harder.

Thousands of volunteers provide a highly skilled capability on which statutory services routinely depend. Yet the support around them does not always match the responsibility placed upon them.

Rising insurance costs, regulatory barriers, employer pressures and increasing operational demands all affect the ability of teams to respond. These issues rarely make headlines. But they determine whether this vital capability remains sustainable.

That is why the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Volunteer Search and Rescue was created: to turn frontline experience into practical policy change. One year on, it is already delivering results.

The clearest example is the Government’s decision to exempt search and rescue vehicles from Vehicle Excise Duty. The financial benefit is welcome, but the wider significance is greater. It acknowledges that volunteer search and rescue is a public service and a critical part of the nation’s resilience infrastructure.

Recent concerns over Care Quality Commission registration requirements for volunteer mountain rescue teams provide a good example. Nobody disputes the importance of patient safety. The question is whether regulatory frameworks designed for hospitals and commercial healthcare providers are proportionate for volunteer emergency services operating in challenging environments.

Good policy reflects operational reality. If regulation becomes disproportionate, the result may be fewer teams able to provide cover, higher costs and greater pressure on statutory services. The APPG is now looking at wider challenges, including insurance, workforce recognition, employer support and legislative barriers. None are glamorous issues. All have a direct impact on whether teams can respond when the call comes.

The irony is obvious. At a time when government rightly places greater emphasis on resilience, it continues to depend heavily on a capability built largely on voluntary effort. That model works because of the extraordinary commitment of volunteers. It should not be taken for granted.

Every rescue depends on training, fundraising, equipment, governance, employer flexibility and thousands of hours of unpaid commitment long before an emergency happens.

The public sees the rescue. Policymakers should see something more: a critical national capability on which the country increasingly depends.

The past year has shown that when Westminster engages seriously with volunteer search and rescue, progress follows.

The question is whether government is prepared to go further, because resilience cannot simply be praised when emergencies happen.

It must be supported before they do.

Torcuil Crichton is Labour MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar andm chair of the Voluntary Search & Rescue All-Party Parliamentary Group