The charity remains committed to moving toward to deliver on its stated objectives:
- To provide support and equipment to our team of local first responders.
- To provide public access defibrillators (PADs) to our local community (the Steyning Area Health territory)
- To provide life-saving demonstrations to our community
- To promote the work of SAFeR to our community.
together with the additional aims of providing good governance:
- To maintain a strong financial base for the charity
- To manage the charity effectively.
Activities during 2024-2025
The main highlights in the past year are summarised below:
Provision of support to the responder team
The responder team which is led strongly by Liz Bull has provided excellent service to our community during the year. By the end of this reporting period it comprised 4 people — Liz, Kate, Iain and Myles. Frank who had been a loyal and committed member of the team for a number of years decided during the year to retire from the responder team, but fortunately for SAFeR agreed to become a trustee. Another long serving responder John, has also decided to retire, having provided considerable support and guidance for the team. We will miss both responders, but are very grateful to them for the huge commitment they have given to the community.
Two potential new responders have applied to the ambulance service (SECAmb) to be trained and we are optimistic that they will be able to join the team within the next few months.
SAFeR continues to support the team with equipment (where this is not supplied by SECAmb). Over the last 12 months SAFeR has supplied additional training defibrillators, a new paediatric Annie and replacement magnetic signage for responders’ vehicles. We also continue to meet the cost of room hire for the team’s monthly training session.
Pleasingly the team continues typically to arrive before the ambulance in around two-thirds of cases when they are called out.
Provision of Public Access Defibrillators (PADs)
We have continued the substantial expansion of our network of public access defibrillators in recent years, by adding two more over the past 12 months. The first was kindly sponsored by a resident in the Castletown area of Upper Beeding. The second saw a new public access installation on the sports centre in the Memorial Park, Upper Beeding, which allowed the existing defibrillator owned by Upper Beeding Football Club to be made publicly available.
We continue to undertake regular tests of the sites for electrical compliance and one of our trustees, Tom Davies, conducts monthly checks of each machine to ensure it remains in full working order.
Provision of demonstrations to the community
Since early 2024 the major focus of our activity in 2024 has been on providing demonstrations to a wide section of the local population.
Led by Liz with support from Frank, other responders and trustees, formal demonstration sessions have been held at:
- The Towers School for year 8 children at Steyning Grammar School
- The Woodcraft Folk group for young people
- The Upper Beeding Primary School Fayre for attendees
- The Scout Camp at Small Dole for youngsters in local scout groups
- The Joint Parish Youth Club in Upper Beeding
- The Senior Youth Club in Steyning
- The Steyning Arts event for attendees.
Over 250 people have attended these demonstration events in the past year.
Promoting the work of SAFeR to the local community
Over the past year we have given talks about SAFeR’s work during the year to Steyning Strummers and Singers. Liz and Frank also kindly ran a stall at the Upper Beeding village hall open evening and at the Friends of Upper Beeding School fete to publicise our activities.
The SAFeR Day street collection also gave the team chance to talk to residents about our work.
Our website and Facebook page are kept up-to-date and we have received a number of “likes” for our activities.
Maintaining a strong financial base
The charity remains in a strong financial position with around £19,000 in available funds despite having invested heavily in new PADs and training equipment over the past couple of years.
Revenue was boosted during the past year with a contribution of £451 from the Steyning Arts event in December and £830 from Steyning Strummers and Singers.
We made a special effort to ensure each of our PAD sites is sponsored and as a result have all but one now sponsored (with an as-yet unfulfilled commitment on the remaining one). We are fortunate also to have a generous sponsor for our website hosting costs.
The main expenditure in the past 12 months was on:
- The new training equipment
- Insurance costs
- Replacement defibrillator batteries and pads
Managing the charity effectively
After a number of years of dedicated commitment to the charity four of our trustees, Ken Peters, Hazel Roxby, David Lott and Cliff Woods decided to retire during the year. We are indebted to them for their hard work , insight and wise counsel, which helped so much to drive forward the work of the charity.
We are fortunate to have recruited three new trustees with a wide range of skills to fill the gap, Frank Bull, Dave Rowland and Lorna Templeton and we look forward to their input to lead SAFeR forward in the years to come.
Notwithstanding all of the recent turnover of trustees and responders, SAFeR remains in a good position to develop its role in supporting the health and welfare of people in the Steyning Health Centre area over the next few years.
I would like to thank both my fellow trustees and our responders for their commitment and support over the past year.
Nick Dungay
October 2025