UKC

A lot of reports on the strain being placed on MR lately.

clearly there’s a very important educational piece on people making better decisions when in the fells to decrease the number of preventable call outs. (This is happening but i think could still be improved).

But also having looked into the requirements for volunteer sign up, I wonder if a new model is worthy of consideration? Perhaps where senior team leaders have a wider pool of people to draw on who are capable/trained but can’t commit quite as frequently, or live outside the strict catchment, but would be able to support on callouts that are nearer to home. Also the NHS doesn’t really help as they don’t consider a callout to be work, so that makes it very hard for hospital Drs to committ.

I can see some obvious issues with this approach, and it wouldn’t work without careful design into the “how”, but it feels like something will need to change if this carries on.

I think there's a case for a 'lower tier' team member or similar. People who've been vetted to be broadly competent and probably won't end up needing rescuing themselves because they've got lost.

During covid various MR teams were posting on social media about how they were running out of team members due to the isolation rules. I emailed my local team offering to help out as essentially a person who can carry stuff and won't need rescuing myself (I included a brief mountaineering CV which demonstrated I'm broadly competent and can look after myself). They said I could join up as a regular aspirant member (with all that entails), so I didn't do it because I don't have the time/inclination to be a full time MR member.

I'm sure someone will be along soon from an MR perspective.

It's probably worth pointing out that it's only a few specific teams in honeypot areas that are overstretched because of numbers of callouts, although maybe that's not apparent because it's the busier teams that get attention in the press. I'm equipment officer for a team in a quieter area - what is causing trouble for us is the ever-increasing demand of bureaucracy and the need to satisfy our insurers. Just personally I've been on four weeks worth or so of external training in the past six months and this is mostly so as to be able to demonstrate competence in our risk assessments. That's alongside team training, callouts, carrying out my role looking after the kit, and, of course, a full time job and finding time to go climbing occasionally.

When our our team leader started doing MR stuff in the 60s he was pressganged out of the pub to go and help carry someone off a crag. For better or worse we can't operate like that any more. It is up to us how we operate as a team and what requirements we place on team members to respond - we have people on the books who I might not see in several months because they've got other things going on in their lives. For us that's fine - we have very low minimum attendance requirements. That isn't the case for all teams, but that's their choice. Our insurance is paid for centrally and will cover up to 50 team members - if we have more operational people we have to pay per person so we try to keep numbers at about that level.

Our strategy to deal with busy times or demanding callouts is to rely on our neighbours. We try to train with neighbouring teams regularly and will often call them as a matter of course if the job is near a boundary or if it looks like it'll be a big one. 

One thing that we could probably improve is to make it easier to call on other MRT members who might be nearby. An app that alerts you to callouts if you're out of your area could be great, but this would only work if teams were up for it. And, unfortunately, there's bad blood between some teams and there can be an unwillingness to trust people from out of area. 

I'd agree with that observation. Years ago, I went along a couple of times to a local lowlands search and rescue outfit (a friend of mine was a member) and was completely put off by the training requirements to take on even a basic role in an active "incident".

I'd go so far as to say in the case of that outfit (certainly at the time), it was actually quite snobbish - bearing in mind that most of their shouts are looking for lost old/vulnerable people in primarily urban areas.

This isn't a particularly hilly area, let alone a mountainous one - and I've got MLTB, BCU and outdoors first aid qualifications, to (hopefully) prove I'm not a complete noddy outdoors!

NOTE: before I get flamed, that's my personal experience of one particular group and it was quite off-putting.

It's not to say there aren't incidents locally where they need to use specialist skills, etc, but some sort of tiered progression seemed to be lacking.

Hmm. If I breakdown on the road my vehicle can be recovered by a privayely-dunded rescue service like thecAA, RAC, etc. If I'm not a member then tough, I have to sort it out myself. Mountain Rescue (MR) came about via RAF crashed aircraft pilot recovery and then volunteer teams of climbers rescuing stranded or injured climbers. Now they rescue lots of stranded or injured people in the hills who are just ordinary folk and not climbers - and the burden has rocketed up. You could set up a MR equivalent of the RAC or AA or Green Flag but I don't think that would work as it implies MR would only come out to an organisation's paying members.

Can we leave stranded and injured ordinary folk to sort themselves out? The injury and death rate would go up and people would complain but so what. It's like this: you walked to the sea cliff edge and the cliff collapsed taking you with it ... more fool you. I think the outcry could be so huge that authority would feel impelled to do something. This, to me, seems like an insoluble problem, which could lead to some sort of mountain area vistor fee being used to fund MR resources. Goodbye to freedom of the hills.

Ironically the, at the time, laudable idea of increasing access to the hills has helped cause this problem. Maybe the access-promoting bodies shold stop doing this.

One way to show that the members are unpaid volunteers would be the hand every one rescued an invoice based on minimum wage, number in the team and total callout hours, payable to local MR. It would soon get round social media that MR is not paid for by local or national government.

Ignoring that most MRTs, while gratefully accepting donations from those they have assisted, do not expect it.  Being aware that those whom have been badly injured may be in no position to offer financial thanks, and to mandate it might result in further significant distress.

If Teams want to change their modus operandi they can, if they want to instigate a wider discussion they aren’t short of ways to get themselves heard, and they are more than able to speak for themselves. 

The actual act of being handed an invoice will make the public more aware and cause a lot of social media discussion. A stupidity factor could be applied as well.

Stupidity factor starts at zero.

There was once an idea that the NHS could do this just to show how much things cost, not actually asking for any payment. I’m not sure if anywhere ever implemented it though.

I was deeply concerned by that idea. There's a cost to the admin of working out a bill like that, in any organisation but especially in one that doesn't charge and therefore isn't set up to keep track of the costs (obviously they still have to manage budgets, but that doesn't necessarily mean costs are being tracked at the level of individual patients). Getting an organisation as large as the NHS set up to do that would surely be time-consuming and expensive, and there would be an ongoing cost as well. As none of that cost is actually going to be recouped by charging, it's largely a wasted effort, so there's very little justification for it other than manoeuvring the NHS into a position where it's easier to start charging in the future because some of the necessary admin is already being done.

They were already doing it for the CCGs weren’t they?

I don’t mean this to be in any way condescending, but the fact that people aren’t aware that this already happens, and think the costs are aren’t calculated, but all just absorbed somehow maybe suggests that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to dispel this myth.

I explicitly acknowledged that the costs must be calculated, but assumed that this would be at a less granular level than personalised bills for individual patients. Is that incorrect?

I am completely confused about what you might - or might not - be proposing here.

That is probably my mistake. But, if you are actually suggesting any changes to the status quo, can you clarify please? Thanks.

Oh you did, I apologise, skim reading while making dinner 🤦‍♂️

Sadly a greater proportion of people aren't as prepared for the hills as many years ago and won't tough it out to solve their predicament because calling for help is always an option now. If mobiles didn't exist and help didn't even begin organising itself for many hours then people might think more about what they carry and what activities they plan to undertake.

Education is the answer, but in the era of the influencer it's a lost cause. 

Where exactly are these reports? In which areas? And where are the strains?

Thanks 

Here's one...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/16/record-high-british-mountain-...

And another...

BBC News - Mountain rescue: Volunteers dealing with 'unprecedented' demand - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4nn4lyy5lo

And it's not just in the UK...

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/wanaka/out-their-depth-w%C4%81naka-searches-l...

I definitely see quite a few Wanakas in the hills out of their depth these days

Two things: 

MRT in the UK works just fine, by and large. Some of the busier teams are at times very stretched and have adopted strategies to cope. 
 

People ought not be too derisory about recuees. On balance the number is tiny compared to the burden on services due to lifestyle diseases. On balance I welcome people having a go at getting out in the countryside and moving their bodies and minds; there should be as few barriers to that as possible. Outdoor education in schools would help, but that’s been slashed back by successive governments and schools. 
 

I agree education is by in large the answer, however could we not use these 'influencers' to our advantage? If people are watching these influencers to get their inspiration for outings, can we use the influencers to also properly educate?

Well articulated Rich, you said it better than I could!