New Control Van Appeal

PRESS RELEASE - Oxfordshire’s Search and Rescue Unit needs a Control Van

OxSAR (Oxfordshire Lowland Search and Rescue) desperately need a new control vehicle. Their current vehicle was declared beyond economical repair in December and the decision has been taken not to repair the van and to scrap it.

As OxSAR is an organisation made up entirely of volunteers and therefore relies purely on donations from the public and local businesses OxSAR is launching an appeal to raise £9,000 to buy and refit our control equipment into a new van.

Chair of OxSAR, Steve Butcher says “OxSAR need a control vehicle as a mobile office, so that our search controllers have somewhere to plan and co-ordinate vulnerable missing person searches, as well as to transport our team equipment so it is available for each search. As we are currently without a control vehicle, we are running searches from our cars and have no way of getting the team’s equipment to a search.”

OxSAR exists to search for missing vulnerable people: children, people with mental health problems or learning disabilities, those suffering with Alzheimer's disease and indeed anyone who, at the time of their disappearance is believed to be at risk from death or injury.

The team works predominantly in the county of Oxfordshire but, if asked, will also assist with out-of-county searches, mainly within the South or anywhere in the UK if required.

The team is managed and resourced purely by volunteers from across the county and, although the team receives the initial contact direct from the Police and have Police liaison at the time of search, they receive no form of statutory funding, donation or support, and are, therefore, reliant purely on public donation to support the vital, life saving service within the county.

OxSAR maintains approximately 15 fully-trained and qualified operational searchers, all of whom are volunteers who receive no form of remuneration for their time or costs incurred attending searches or training exercises.

Further details of OxSARs recent search activity and any other information about the unit can be found at www.isis-sar.org.uk, or by contacting unit chair - Steve Butcher - on 07825 173 999 or chair@isis-sar.org.uk.