Tony
Thank you and your organisation once again this year
for the generous donation of £400 which is great
fully received and will help to keep our essential
service operational for another year.
As discussed on Friday find below a few notes about
our service that you may wish to circulate to your
members…….
About Severn
Freewheelers
Seven Freewheelers Emergency Voluntary Service (EVS),
are a registered charity that provides a free
out-of-hours emergency motorcycle courier service to
hospitals and other NHS Trust establishments in our
operational area. The centre of our operational area
is Cheltenham and Gloucester, extending to the whole
of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire
and North Wiltshire. We have a team of highly
qualified riders who deliver whole blood, pathology
samples, patient scans / x-rays, human milk for
premature babies and medicines - in fact any medical
essentials that will fit on a motorbike.
How does the
charity operate?
Seven Freewheelers EVS ability to operate relies
entirely on donations from members of the public,
clubs and companies. The charity has a slogan
"Riding for Life", because our volunteers play a key
part in saving people’s lives. We have over 100
members at present. We also help save the NHS money
and resources that would otherwise be wasted on
taxis or expensive couriers. We operate 7 days a
week 365 days a year, 7pm-7am weekdays and 24 hours
at weekends and bank holidays.
All riders are required to hold an advanced
motorcycle riding qualification and are trained in
using blue lights and handling hazardous substances.
There is always one coordinator who manages all the
calls and riders across the area. We deliver
emergency jobs using blue lights in minutes and
deliver less urgent jobs within the hour. We also
undertake more routine non-urgent jobs, which are
scheduled to optimise our activities. There are 27
separate Blood Bike groups across the UK that
operate similar operations. These groups provide
this key service in a partnership supported by the
Nationwide Association of Blood Bikes.
Our charity needs £50,000 a year to operate, which
is hard to maintain. The biggest expense we carry
are the police specification bikes. At any one time
we have four operational bikes and one spare,
however the wear and tear on the bikes mean that we
can only use them for two years before we need to
replace them. On average our riders and bikes do
130,000 miles a year, and have covered over 1.4
million miles since we began operations in 2007!
Recent developments?
Over recent years we have supported local NHS trusts
to collect and deliver donated breast milk, which is
essential to the development of premature babies. We
deliver this milk for processing from women in their
homes or we courier processed milk to hospitals to
preserve the lives of critically ill premature
babies which proving to be a growing part of our
service. We are also talking with NHS Trusts to
see if a part-day service would help them further
optimise their operations and save more money. We
need to consider how extending our service can be
funded and with help from groups like the Cheltenham
Skittles League hope to meet any request for support
we receive.
I hope you find the above useful. Thank you again
for supporting us.
Kind Regards
Tony Wilkes
SFW Trustee, Secretary and Compliance Officer