Sixties night in Ludlow swings in with £8,500 for charity

Held at Ludlow Racecourse, the invitation only event was headlined by pop group Showaddywady playing a mixture of their 70s hits and 50s and 60s classics.

Event organiser Mike Morris has personal experience of the work of the air ambulance when flown to hospital after a fall from scaffolding.

He said: "I’m a massive 60s music fan and the 2019 event was the 13th Annual Charity Night we’ve run. Over the year’s we have raised about £60k for charity and we are really pleased that this year’s money has gone to support the fantastic work of the air ambulance – which is a cause close to my heart."

Midlands Air Ambulance Charity (MAAC) operates and funds three air ambulances covering six Midlands counties including Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the West Midlands and is funded entirely by donations. The charity relies on support from local people and businesses, to raise the £9 million needed to undertake on average 2,000 missions every year and does not receive funding from the Government or National Lottery.

Maria Jones, Shropshire fundraising executive for (MAAC), said: "On average, it costs £2,600 for every mission the air ambulance undertakes and we are grateful to all the local people and businesses that raise money on behalf of the charity – without their generosity we wouldn’t be able to provide this lifesaving work.

"It’s also great to see people like Mike, who have been helped by the air ambulance in the past, raising vital funds to help someone else who might be in the same position as he was in the future.’"

Operating from regional airbases at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, Strensham in Worcestershire and Tatenhill in Staffordshire, the air ambulances can reach 90 per cent of the region within eight minutes.

The charity responds to some of the most traumatic incidents including cardiac arrests, road traffic collisions and sports injuries. The aircraft, which carries a crew comprising a pilot, two paramedics or a paramedic and flight doctor, plus full life-support medical equipment, can reach remote locations to attend to patients unreachable by land ambulance. Three rapid response vehicles are deployed when the helicopters are unable to fly, due to bad weather for example.

Since 1991, MAAC has responded to over 52,000 missions, making it one of the busiest air ambulance services in the UK.