Air Ambulance gets 150th night-landing site

Newton Ferrers is newest location

Devon Air Ambulance has a new community landing site. People in Newton Ferrers in the South Hams has installed flood lights at Butts Park playing field. They can be switched on remotely by an operator at the South Western Ambulance Service centre and, hey presto, the helicopter can land safely.

During a training flight into the Newton Ferrers community landing site, Philip Parry-Smith, Chairman of Newton and Noss Parish Council, said:  The playing field provides a large open area for their night operations and being close the main road means that the most rapid treatment and evacuation of a casualty is now available to us until 2am every day. 
 
“This facility is incredibly important in a large rural parish like ours, where people who fall ill, or are involved in an accident, will benefit from a speedy response by the air ambulance crews. We are particularly pleased that alongside a grant from Devon Air Ambulance, through the generosity of a local resident the costs to our community for the electrical installation have been paid for, enabling the project to be completed in record time”. 
 
Toby Russell, community landing sites development officer at Devon Air Ambulance said: “We’d like to extend a big thank-you to everyone involved with the project in Newton Ferrers and indeed we are really grateful to the huge number of people and organisations that have supported us by establishing the 150 community landing sites now in operation.”
 
“The timing for the launch of Newton Ferrers site comes as Devon Air Ambulance moves back to full night operations, after a phased re-introduction of the service following the challenges placed on us by coronavirus. We are clearly very pleased to once again be operating until 2am every day by helicopter and these community landing sites will once again ensure our teams can land at night to deliver urgent medical care to patients across Devon.”