The UK's volunteer mountain rescue teams have faced rising costs due to the VAT increase and fuel duty
The coalition Government today announced a grant of £200,000 to the UK’s volunteer mountain rescuers.
The move follows a protracted campaign by Mountain Rescue England & Wales to get relief for the VAT and fuel duty teams have to pay to the Treasury.
Mountain rescuers have long pointed to the inequity of a situation where the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a similar volunteer-staffed rescue service, is exempt from paying VAT, but the scores of mountain and cave rescue teams have to stump up the cash from funds donated by the public.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, announcing the grant, said the funding would run for four years, with a contribution of at least £200,000 each year to 75 teams in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Treasury said it was the first time the UK Government had made a direct contribution to mountain rescue services. The Scottish Government allocates £300,000 each year for teams north of the border.
A Treasury spokesperson said the funding was to contribute to the cost of procuring equipment. Mountain rescue teams have found themselves increasingly called to non-mountain emergencies such as the 2009 Cumbria floods, severe winter weather and searches for missing vulnerable members of the public.
Mr Alexander said: “I am incredibly pleased to announce this additional funding. This recognises the valuable and unique work that volunteer mountain rescue teams do across the UK and will help support the costs of expensive rescue equipment.”
The allocations for each area are calculated based on the number of teams affiliated to each representative body: £124,000 will be available for England and Wales; £68,000 for Scotland; and £8,000 for Northern Ireland.
England and Wales have 48 eligible teams; 24 are in Scotland; and three in Northern Ireland. The grant will cover the whole of the UK and will be shared between the three mountain rescue associations: Mountain Rescue England and Wales, Mountain Rescue Council of Scotland and Northern Ireland Mountain, Cave and Cliff Rescue Coordinating Committee.
The move follows a protracted campaign by Mountain Rescue England & Wales to get relief for the VAT and fuel duty teams have to pay to the Treasury.
Mountain rescuers have long pointed to the inequity of a situation where the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a similar volunteer-staffed rescue service, is exempt from paying VAT, but the scores of mountain and cave rescue teams have to stump up the cash from funds donated by the public.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, announcing the funding, said the funding would run for four years, with a contribution of at least £200,000 each year to 75 teams in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Treasury said it was the first time the UK Government had made a direct contribution to mountain rescue services. The Scottish Government allocates £300,000 each year for teams north of the border.
A Treasury spokesperson said the funding was to contribute to the cost of procuring equipment. Mountain rescue teams have found themselves increasingly called to non-mountain emergencies such as the 2009 Cumbria floods, severe winter weather and searches for missing vulnerable members of the public.
Mr Alexander said: “I am incredibly pleased to announce this additional funding. This recognises the valuable and unique work that volunteer mountain rescue teams do across the UK and will help support the costs of expensive rescue equipment.”
The allocations for each area are calculated based on the number of teams affiliated to each representative body: £124,000 will be available for England and Wales; £68,000 for Scotland; and £8,000 for Northern Ireland.
England and Wales have 48 eligible teams; 24 are in Scotland; and three in Northern Ireland. The grant will cover the whole of the UK and will be shared between the three mountain rescue associations: Mountain Rescue England and Wales, Mountain Rescue Council of Scotland and Northern Ireland Mountain, Cave and Cliff Rescue Coordinating Committee.
Mick
02 August 2011While this is excellent news and about time, I notice that the Lowland Search Teams aren't included in this? They perform the same tasks to the same standards and are called out just as often.
Jordan
02 August 2011I've just done some quick maths and that works out £2,583.33 for each England and Wales team, £2,833.33 for Scotland and £2,666.66 for Northern Ireland.
Call my a cynic, but I don't imagine that even covers a fraction of the VAT/Fuel Duty this grand is in place of.
Andrew Taylor
02 August 2011Are the Scots going to share their £300k with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, now that our money is going North of the Border? ;-)
Or will the Scottish Government reduce the £300k by £68k, with a brief nod of thanks to the "coalition"? 8-)
JUST enough money to prevent MR Teams from saying "Mountain Rescue is purely voluntary, with no Government support" without actually giving MOST Teams back what they have paid in VAT. As such it should be rejected as "too little, too cynically" and the VAT battle re-joined. That won't happen, though. Another battle lost.
Dave Fildes
03 August 2011Without wishing to be miserly the fact that Scotland is included just shows how little the people in high places understand what is going on. Scotland gets £300k in government grants already so why are they included in this? Are the Tories hoping to win Scottish votes? On the positive side something is better than nothing and having accepted the premise that the government needs to support MR in the UK I think this gives MREW a lever to try to prise more concessions from the government - that is if the people who run MREW have the bottle to continue the fight - which from my experience isn't necessarily so.
Andrew Taylor
04 August 2011Something is NOT better than nothing when it deprives you of the moral justification for fighting a battle for fairness.
A Team that has to hand over £4,000 a year of the public's generous donations to the Government (for the privilege of saving the Government one-fiftieth of several £millions of rescue costs) does not feel well-served by an ill-judged and poorly administered handout of less than £3k.