Today the team received a very pleasant surprise in the post in the form of a £1,500.00 donation from Greater Manchester Police for “the assistance provided by The Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.”

This is a considerable donation, gratefully received by the team, and has been granted in recognition of the assistance we regularly provide for Greater Manchester Police with regards to lowland and the occasional upland searches throughout the Greater Manchester Police Force area.

This is the second example in a short period of the considerable support Greater Manchester Police regularly provides to the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team
At the end of this October, Greater Manchester Police kindly decided to adapt its insurance scheme it maintains to provide insurance for Mountain Rescue volunteers operating within the Force Area, to adopt the terms of what is becoming known as the ’National Mountain Rescue Insurance Scheme’.

This ’National’ scheme is a very thorough and comprehensive insurance policy that offers Mountain Rescue volunteers a fit for purpose and very extensive, all encompassing set of terms. It already operates amongst our colleague MRTs in the Lake District and North Wales, fully supported respectively by Cumbria Constabulary and North Wales Police (and now Greater Manchester Police)

Incidentally there are moves afoot at a national level to seek direct governmental funding to implement this Insurance policy (and its terms) throughout all of England and Wales for all the MRTs and Cave Rescue Teams operating in England and Wales, thereby transferring the cost of insuring Mountain Rescue volunteers away from Police Forces, and towards direct HMG funding for one common ’National MR Insurance Scheme’.

The whole team wishes to express its thanks to GMP for its kind financial support of Bolton MRT and its continuing readiness to provide us with insurance.