Mountain rescue team members are among those honoured. Photo: Bob Smith/grough

Members of rescue teams have been recognised in the New Year Honours.

Five rescuers have been appointed MBEs and a sixth will receive a British Empire Medal.

Malcolm Grindrod of Coniston was awarded the MBE for services to mountain rescue in Cumbria.

Mr Grindrod is vice-president of the Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs Association and is also a member of Coniston Mountain Rescue Team.

He has been involved in mountain rescue for 55 years and was for a time a member of Langdale Ambleside MRT. Along with other volunteers, he and his search dog took part in the operation following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in 1988 in which 270 people died.

A spokesperson for the search dogs association said: “Malcolm is one of the founder members of LDMRSDA and as such has helped many of today’s handlers to achieve their goal of becoming a graded search dog team.

“His knowledge, experience and comical ‘tails’ of wisdom have often helped many a dog handler on a cold, wet fellside.

“This is very well deserved.”

Pete Buxton of Barrow-in-Furness was also appointed an MBE for services to mountain rescue and the community in Cumbria.

He has been a volunteer member of the Duddon and Furness MRT for 26 years.

Alec Collyer, a founder member and chairman of Dartmoor Search and Rescue Ashburton was similarly honoured for services to search and rescue in Dartmoor.

Mr Collyer has been involved as a volunteer rescuer for more than 40 years and is still an active volunteer of the team. A team spokesperson said the award was ‘very well deserved’.

PC James Gallienne of Cornwall was appointed an MBE for services to policing and search and rescue. Mr Gallienne serves with Devon and Cornwall Police and a founder member of Cornwall Search and Rescue Team. He is also a qualified search dog handler.

Another police officer was nominated by North Wales Police for his MBE. Tim Bird of Conwy received his honour for services to policing and the community in North Wales.

Mr Bird, a detective constable, is also a member of Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation, joining the team in 2003.

Chris Lloyd of the Ogwen Valley team said Mr Bird was appointed as one of the team leaders about four years ago. “He is also a professional mountaineer when not working for the police, and plays an important part with the development and training of technical rope rescue and swiftwater rescue.

“With these skills he is a valuable asset to North Wales Police when there are fatal incidents on the mountains and nominates OVMRO to assist NWP to recover bodies from remote places.”

Mark Gunter Beyer of Devon will receive the British Empire Medal for services to defence and the Dartmoor mountain rescue group. He is an administrative officer with the Ministry of Defence.