The team wants to build a training room at its base

A volunteer rescue team is asking the public to help fund a new training room at its base.

North Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team will launch a crowdfunding appeal on Sunday in a bid to raise £10,000.

The team of 35 volunteers has been involved with 24 rescues in the past 12 months including five over the Easter period. These ranged from a missing elderly person in rural north Devon, a woman with an injured leg who couldn’t be reached by the ambulance service, to a group of young people who requested assistance whilst on a moorland expedition.

A team of five volunteers also went to York over the Christmas period to support the local mountain rescue teams with the flood-relief efforts.

Team leader David Stoneman said: “We’re really hoping our friends and the public will help us raise the £10,000 needed to create a training room in the industrial unit we bought three years ago.

“As a team we train every week practising first aid, search management, rope and water rescue techniques. We often train on Dartmoor but sometimes we need to be indoors.

“Although all our members have a day job and family commitments, they give their time to train regularly and to help others, like all charities we have to fundraise.

“We’ve recently received a grant from the Big Lottery’s Awards for All and donations from Devon County Council’s locality budget, the Norman Family Trust and Eaton Aerospace which is fantastic and has meant we’ve been able to start building an equipment store and a drying room and are in the process of arranging for a mezzanine floor to be installed.”

But Mr Stoneman said the team doesn’t have enough money at the moment to create a training room which is why it has launched a crowdfunding appeal. The appeal site will go live on 1 May.

“Anyone can visit our webpage to find out more about our work and our project and decide if they’d like to help,” he said.

“We’ve got lots of options from donating as little as £5 to larger sums with rewards including a day out with the team on a practice exercise; a talk to an organisation of your choice or a gift of a cuddly rescue teddy.

“Whatever people feel able to give, we will be very grateful and thank you; it all makes a difference.”