Buxton Mountain Rescue Team is a registered charity and has no political leanings whatsoever.  However, when it comes to paying tax on the money that people donate generously to the team, then we do have a view.

All mountain rescue teams provide a service to the community free of charge.  Of course, the service isn’t really free.  It costs Buxton team around £35,000 per year to remain operational and most other teams will have similar expenses.   92% of that money has to be raised from the public often by our operational members standing on street corners with collection tins.

So to sum up, our volunteer operational members spend hundreds of hours training and delivering a free service to the community. The community responds by donating generously their hard earned cash.    So its rather annoying that HM Government take 20% in VAT on virtually all purchases made by the team.  That equates to something between £4,000 and £6,000 each year

Mountain rescue is not made up of trading companies and has no method of recovering the VAT.  In fairness, some items, first aid supplies for example, are VAT free, but on the mass majority of purchases the team has to pay VAT.

Mountain Rescue has been campaigning for some years for exemption from VAT and despite the support of our local politicians of all parties, no progress has been made.  Government does annually provide a central sum of money to Mountain Rescue England and Wales which has many strings attached but equates to about £2,000 per team per year for equipment.  We are grateful for that but it still leaves the team paying VAT on most of the other £33,000 it spends each year.

Please take a few moments to support the private petition to HM Government launched to highlight awareness of the situation.

Thank You