RESIDENTS in St Briavels have been heartened by a generous gift of a brand new public access defibrillator (PAD).

The new life-saving device has been installed in the assembly rooms with a possible further two or three planned in the near future. The gift was donated by Evac+Chair International following an appeal to the UK's largest and principal distributor of CardiAid defibrillators.

Mark Roberts, director at Evac+Chair International said: "We are delighted that we have been able to help the assembly rooms and its local community...

"Automated External Defibrillator's (AED) are easy to use, light-weight and provide speed and control in times of crisis where people are under immense pressure. Using an AED within the first few minutes can make the difference of life or death to someone suffering a heart attack or cardiac arrest."

Heartbeat St Briavels is a group of volunteers headed by Bob Jones, Piers Chivers and Jo Thompson, who have combined to provide a number of health-related initiatives in the parish. They have been actively fundraising for additional equipment, and with financial assistance from the new St Briavels wind turbine community fund, are now set to purchase a second public access defibrillator in the coming weeks.

The group has already provided two public first aid training sessions to prepare local residents and ensure they know how to use the equipment. Another group session is planned for April, and the equipment has talk through step-by-step instructions for those who have never used a PAD before.

Spokesperson, trustee and director of St Briavels assembly rooms, Karen Cockfield said: "We have been really moved and impressed with the lovely people at Evac+Chair for their swift and positive response to our appeal. They listened intently and with genuine concern before making an extremely generous gesture of donating a free defibrillator to St Briavels assembly rooms...We are also very grateful to Heartbeat St Briavels for providing excellent first aid training free of charge and to so many people, which may well come to save lives considering our rural location. What words of thanks are sufficient in return for that"

Bob Jones of Heartbeat St Briavels, added: "This is a major step forward in our campaign and raising awareness of the importance of having AED's, especially in remote rural areas such as ours. If it only saved one life then it has all been worth it. We will continue to purchase more defibrillators and drive forward other health initiatives to protect the welfare of local residents."