Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team receives a Big Lottery Fund Grant

Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team four-wheel-drive ambulance

Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team are pleased to announce that the Big Lottery Fund have awarded £9,900 to the team through the Awards for All scheme.

The award has been used to purchase a new All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) to allow for the swift transportation of personnel and equipment to a casualty site. The new vehicle is fully road legal and comes fitted with extremely bright search lights and blue lights for identification purposes while off-road.

Team Leader, Pete Goble: says: “The new ATV will allow us to serve the local community better, with the time taken to get to a casualty being reduced – whether this is on Pendle Hill or down a snowy lane at a remote farmhouse.

“It can travel where our 4x4 vehicles can’t and has minimal impact on the travelling surface. We now have two ATVs which allow one to be stored at a location for swift use on Pendle Hill and the other to be transported from our Burnley Base to an incident quickly.

“We can travel up the Miners Track on Pendle Hill and get lifesaving equipment to a casualty in under 8 minutes, we thank the lottery for this grant award, it could be the difference between life and death.”

The fundraising continues though, our original ATV will come to the end of its’ serviceable life soon and we will have to decide whether we can afford to replace it. We will also continue to fundraise for the £30,000 it costs to run the team every year before the major expenditure of new ambulances, base renovations and the like are considered. The public support of our life saving search and rescue service is extremely valuable to us and we thank the public for their ongoing support, remember we do so much more than just mountains.