I am immensely proud to be the founder and chairman of Isle of Wight Search and Rescue (WightSAR), who recently celebrated being awarded His Majesty The King’s Award for Voluntary Service. This award recognises the dedication of our members, and the contribution that our life-saving work has made to the Isle of Wight community. The award marks a milestone of excellence and recognition for the team’s work. As you can imagine, the team are elated to have received this.

WightSAR are a lowland rescue team of professionally-trained volunteers who give up their free time to provide 24 hours a day, 365 days a year cover to support Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, with life-savings searches for high-risk missing people across the Isle of Wight. This includes children, the elderly, those living with memory issues or mental health difficulties, to those seeking to harm themselves. Every search is an emergency, and the team can be on the ground searching within 30 minutes of a call coming in.

The first lowland rescue team on the Island was formed in 2008; this was an initial response team (IRT) for Hampshire Search & Rescue (HantSAR) which was set up after a major search incident in Parkhurst Forest. The value of this new search asset was immediately recognised by Hampshire Constabulary and the relationship has been growing ever since.

Three years later, in 2011, it was determined that the team had made such progress that we should form an independent unit. WightSAR was born.

Since then, we have grown into a team of 32 members; we also have two search dogs and handlers who have started their probationary training. It is hoped that the two dogs will progress and qualify at the end of 2025, a first for the team. We have a dedicated incident control vehicle that serves as our operational hub during deployment, as well as a support vehicle and off-road vehicle.

In addition to our life-saving missing person and evidence searches, we are members of the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Resilience Forum, and have an agreement with the local council and NHS Trust to offer additional resources and assets during major incidents such as extreme weather, evacuations and when community support is needed.

We ask a lot of our volunteers – from being on call, searching for long hours in all weathers, purchasing personal kit, training twice a month, plus undertaking fund-raising activity. In line with all lowland rescue teams, we receive no central funding, so all our operational costs, equipment purchases, and larger projects are all funded by grants and fund-raising by the members. We are extremely grateful to the Isle of Wight community and our sponsors for their continued support.

WightSAR is constantly moving forward, and The King’s Award acknowledges this progress. Our next project is to secure new accommodation that provides space for all three of our search vehicles and a dedicated training space for the team.

We are currently looking to recruit new members to join the team and become probationary search technicians. In-house training is provided to include search techniques and strategies, team working, first aid, patient evacuation, navigation, forensic awareness, safeguarding and radio communication. The training concludes with an assessment weekend in April. All volunteers must be fit and able, able to pass enhanced DBS checks and hold a full driving licence.

Anyone interested in joining should visit our website for more information and the contact details for our membership officer – wightsar.org.