administering a defibrillator for a village community

Question

apologies - as I imagine this question has been asked before and am happy to be redirected to the answer/guidance.

I am the chair/secretary of the local Parish meeting ( no longer a council as numbers dropped etc..) . In my tenure, we have never raised funds as a parish, held a bank account and my yearly accounting returns have been the basic minimum required.

I sense this is going to change as a number of new people to the village are 'championing issues - quite rightly, which include speed cameras but the most pressing and ongoing is raising funds for a defibrillator.

the location and mechanics of said item are in hand, with the capital monies being raised through a "just giving" sponsorship mechanism, its the eventual payment to a particular body, and the administration of the ongoing maintenance costs that concern me.

 Should we be doing this through the Parish Meeting- setting up a bank account etc..or should we establish a community charity??

Answer 1

The parish meeting has the legal authority to maintain them (lifesaving equipment).

What you need is someone who WILL always check them on a fortnightly or monthly basis to ensure they are working, and who will fund the replacement consumables after every use about £35 each use for ours.

Otherwise the structure doesn't matter.

Comments

Sorry, I was in play area when I wrote my first response.

So once you have decided who will do the checks and who will pay for the replacement parts (and who will arrange to get the unit from the ambulance service and back to the village after each use), that might indicate the best way of structuring.

As a Parish Council, we have made the clerk responsible for the checks (which can be delegated), so that we can guarantee the checks have been done, rather than relying upon volunteers (or even councillors) to check and report them to the ambulance service on a fortnightly or monthly basis - if the check isn't done, the defib comes off their electronic map.

Answer 2

Do you have Community First Responders? If so they may be willing to check them for you as ours do.

Electricity wise for the charger is met by the pubs/businesses we attach them to as their donation. However the cost of replacement pads (which have an expiry) are not the cheapest in the world. But that’s about it from running costs.