About Us

Community First Responders are volunteers trained by the East of England Ambulance Service in basic life support, to attend life-threatening 999 emergency calls.

Each fully trained volunteer on-call is dispatched by the ambulance service's health and emergency operations centre to attend and arrive at the patients location within 8 minutes. In a situation where a patient has suffered a cardiac arrest, every minute that passes decreases the patients chances of survival by 10%. In all cases where a First Responder is called an ambulance is also dispatched.

First Responder groups are completely self-funded and rely on kind donations and sponsors to provide us with the vital training equipment, uniforms and general running costs to stay operational. If you would like to contribute a donation, are interested in sponsoring us or would like us to give a talk please contact us.

Since the group was formed in 2005 we have attended thousands of calls. In 2013 we received 276 calls and the volunteers covered 11,386 hours, in 2016 this increased to 610 calls with the group members covering 15,154 voluntary hours which equates to 631 days (between four kits).

2020 has been a difficult year with many responders stood down throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but despite this we have still volunteered over 11,000 hours, attending over 500 calls, not including December!

Because of the age diversity within this rural area the expectation is that this average will continue in the foreseeable future.