A LIFESAVING York charity is looking for help to raise £75,000 in vital funds to help keep their service going.

York Rescue Boat (YRB) was founded in 2014 following a spate of deaths in the Rivers Ouse and Foss in York, but it took almost a year of fundraising to pay for equipment before they could take to the water.

Today rescue boat volunteers are on call 24/7, 365 days of the year to support North Yorkshire Police and North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service as well as carrying out weekly patrols.

The city charity say they are now in need of a new incident support vehicle after its second hand Ford Transit van, bought in 2015 and used extensively for coordinating search and rescue incidents, has seen better days. YRB has now turned to the Aviva Community Fund 2021 to try to raise the much-needed funds and are looking for the public’s help in this. Dave Horn, operational director for the charity said: “York Rescue Boat receives no Government funding and it costs us about £25,000 a year to keep the Team operational.

"Vehicles and large projects require additional and specific funding and so we are looking at trying to raise around £75,000 for our new vehicle. "As a charity, we rely on the generosity of members of the public, every member of the team are volunteers with no paid staff. This ensures all money donated to York Rescue Boat goes straight back into equipping our team, continuing our work and funding our youth education program.

"We appreciate that the ongoing pandemic has caused financial uncertainty for everyone and especially for charities, which is why we’re so grateful for any and all support we receive; using the Aviva Community Fund to assist us in the fundraising is going to get us a long way to realising our goal.”

Click here to support YRB.