CAMELFORD Town Council could be looking into financing a new defibrillator, as well as providing more training sessions, following an incident in the town recently, writes Rosie Cripps.

Mayor, Cllr Rob Rotchell said: “As we know, there was a serious incident in town. There has been a lot of discussion on social media, following the incident, and there were three main issues. The first was that a lot of people didn’t know where the nearest defibrillator was; second was training and third was the availability of the piece of kit.

“We should be taking a lean on this. It’s a very big community issue. I think we should look at financing a defibrillator and look at installing one outside this building (Clease Hall).”

Cllr Claire Hewlett, speaking about more basic CPR and first aid training opportunities, said: “Perhaps we could look at running evening sessions as a council?”

Cllr Rotchell added: “I think we should look at financing one (a defibrillator) and supporting the training, and then raising awareness as well. We’ve got all these things, like social media and our website — perhaps we could have a box in the Camelfordian too. This is a good chance for us to promote it.”

Although Cllr Rotchell was unsure of how much a new defibrillator would cost, Cllr Andy Shaw said: “The last one cost £3,000. You need a strong internet connection, and it’s also about access to the building.”

The council then discussed the machine’s ability to direct an individual on how to use it on another person. Cllr Rotchell said: “It’s effectively fool-proof, but you do have to be quite courageous to use it.”

Councillors praised the work of local on-call paramedic, Charlotte Hicks, who attended the recent incident and also held CPR, first aid and defibrillator training sessions at the Old Bank in the past.

Cllr Aaron Dawe said: “I went down to the Old Bank for one of those training sessions. I thought it was great and informative. This whole system is something we should be raising awareness of.”

Town clerk, Esther Grieg, explained that she had been looking into financing a defibrillator for three parish councils, and said that one way of securing a piece of kit is by the council buying it and training themselves, with a grant of £4,000. There is also the option to lease a unit from South West Ambulance Services Trust (SWAST), where the machine will need servicing and people can get hold of the equipment at any time.

Cllr Rotchell said the council should ‘keep this as simple as we can’, as the other defibrillators in the area are FLEET machines.

Councillors agreed that they would look into more detail about training, promoting and financing a defibrillator.

A free basic CPR and defibrillator training event will take place at the Old Bank on Thursday, November 9. It will be a two-hour session, from 2pm until 4pm, and will allow people wanting to learn basic training to come along for a separate ten-minute session within this timescale.