Company launches drive to install lifesaving equipment

A commercial vehicle distributor has launched an ambitious drive to install lifesaving heart defibrillators within the community.

Ian Middleton, of Hartshorne Group, with Andy Jeynes, of West Midlands Ambulance Service, with the first of the defibrillators at Hartshorne Group in Erdington, Birmingham

Hartshorne Group, which operates from depots across the region including at Shrewsbury, is partnering with the West Midlands Ambulance Service about where best to locate the medical devices.

Defibrillators can save the life of somebody experiencing a cardiac arrest.

The company says its Healthy Heart Campaign will also be kind to the planet by encouraging staff to walk or cycle to work in order to raise funds.

"We know how important a healthy heart is, so we wanted to do something that benefits not just our staff but also the whole community," said Hartshorne managing director Ian Middleton.

More than 30,000 people a year in the UK suffer a cardiac arrest that takes place somewhere other than a hospital.

Less than one in 10 survive.

Defibrillators come with voice instructions and can be used by anyone to help restart a heart in an emergency.

Andy Jeynes, community response manager for West Midlands Ambulance Service, recently visited Hartshorne Group in order to provide advice to staff.

Front from left, Ian Middleton and Andy Jeynes. Back from left, Hartshorne senior staff Nathan Lawton, James Cowen and Brian Cronin

Andy said: "We're delighted to be partnering with Hartshorne Group to help advise on its campaign. Defibrillators save lives, it's as simple as that."

Hartshorne, which supplies and services Volvo commercial vehicles, will donate £1 towards community-based defibrillators for every hour of physical exercise that staff track via an app.

The company, which has its head office in Walsall, is also paying for defibrillators to be installed at all of its nine depots across the Midlands – the first of which has already been installed at its site in Erdington, Birmingham.

The defibrillators will all be registered with The Circuit, a national defibrillator database that is used to direct 999-callers to their locations in an emergency.

Mr Middleton added: "We saw during the Euros with Christian Eriksen, and more recently in the crowd during a Premier League football game, that cardiac arrests can occur unexpectedly at any place."

Ambulance chiefs say that businesses and organisations that may already have defibrillators can register them for public use via the national database by going online at thecircuit.uk