Bosses at a South Yorkshire beauty spot have praised a police and fire service led youth programme for its impact on transforming one of the county’s best loved green spaces.

Young people aged 16 to 25 who took part in the Princes Trust Team Programme at Dearne fire station earlier this year cleared rubbish, reinforced lakeside banks and created a nature trail as part of efforts to improve Manvers Lake.

Their efforts have won praise from Manvers Lake & Dearne Valley Trust, who say the team’s efforts have boosted visitor numbers and renewed LOCAL interest in the site.

Director Ian Rodwell said: “Despite unsettled weather we have had a great summer with more visitors to site than ever before. Many of these visitors come to walk around the lake and admire the views, and enjoy some green space in the heart of South Yorkshire.

“This green space is much better thanks to the work of the Princes Trust Team Programme, who cleared many years accumulation of rubbish from deep in the undergrowth. They also constructed some natural erosion protection from materials on site to protect the lakeside banks from washing away and made a nature trail through a small coppice.

“The team showed commendable effort and determination, with many of them working outdoors for a week in February when it rained almost constantly. A couple of team members wanted some shelter from the rain and they asked me if they could paint the inside of our cafe area, which they started on immediately and stayed late until the job was finished. It really was a pleasure to have a group of young people on site who wanted to make such a difference.

“As well as the long lasting environmental improvements gained by clearing the rubbish and protecting the banks from erosion, a legacy of the project was the formation of the ‘Friends of Manvers Lake’. This is a group of volunteers who communicate via a Facebook group and all want to see the lake and parkland improve.

“When the young people set up the group, within days it gained over 100 members and this number is still growing. We use the group to communicate with people who are not members of our sports clubs, but who have an interest in the lake to let them know what events we have and what is happening on site.”

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue and South Yorkshire Police teamed up with the Prince’s Trust to deliver the Team Programme two years ago. During that time around 100 young people have benefited from the 12 week personal development course for unemployed 16 – 25 year olds, offering work experience, qualifications, practical skills, community projects and a residential week.

The courses are based at fire stations and are the only programmes of their type in the country to be jointly delivered by fire and police services. For more information or to sign-up, email princestrust@syfire.gov.uk

South Yorkshire’s fire crews have taken part in a realistic, rope rescue exercise to test their response in the event of a major height rescue incident.

The exercise was simulated to test the emergency planning and training procedures in place at Tween Bridge Wind Farm in Doncaster. It specifically focused on dealing with emergency scenarios in which a casualty is suspended at height.

The first scenario of the day involved the complex rescue of a casualty who was suspended 25 metres up a turbine on a ladder. The second scenario involved crews lowering a casualty from the top of an 80 metre turbine using a stretcher. Crews from Thorne and Dearne fire stations worked together to successfully carry out each rope rescue.

The site manager from Tween Bridge, alongside two maintenance operators and two external rope rescue instructors were also involved in the exercise.

Darren Robertson, station manager at South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue, said: “Firefighters respond to a huge range of emergencies, far beyond the house fires and road traffic collisions we are traditionally associated with. Rescues from height can be extremely complex, which is what makes training like this so important. Both scenarios were successfully completed and generated a great deal of operational learning.”

Richard Couzens, Regional Production Manager at Tween Bridge Wind Farm, said: “Emergency planning and training is of paramount importance not only at E.ON but throughout the wind industry. Even minor injuries can quickly escalate into more challenging situations when you take into account the fact that the casualty is at great height above ground level and in need of assistance.

It is only through working with local fire and rescue crews and specialist rope rescue teams that we can increase familiarisation around our working environment. We are incredibly grateful to the local teams for taking time out to join us for the training activity and share their knowledge and experience in this area.”

This recent exercise formed part of an ongoing aim at South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue to continually improve emergency response procedures to incidents that aren’t just fires.

Tween Bridge is one of E.ONs many onshore wind farms across the UK and is home to 22 turbines.

A fire crew from Sheffield is celebrating after coming out on top in a national competition to test firefighters’ search and rescue skills in heat and smoke.

Central station were awarded first place in the UK finals of the Breathing Apparatus (BA) challenge- defending the title for a third year.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue firefighters competed against other fire crews from across the UK.

Each team tackled a series of scenarios involving the rescue of ‘casualties’ from inside smoke-filled buildings at the Fire Service College in Moreton-in-Marsh.

In total four awards were won by South Yorkshire firefighters.

Judges at the competition named the Central crew overall winners after scoring firefighters in a number of different skill areas including BA search and rescue, Firefighting while in BA, pump operator, BA entry control officer and incident command.

Head of Service Delivery Support Stewart Nicholson, said; “We’re very proud that for the third year in a row a crew from South Yorkshire has taken first place in a national competition that was filled with ultra professional, highly-skilled firefighters.  The standard is always extremely high but is rising year on year, so for our crew to perform again to such a high standard on the national stage is a fantastic achievement.”

A South Yorkshire charity which has been helping people touched by trauma for more than a decade has officially launched.

HOPE has acted as a peer support network for people who have lost loved ones in fires, road traffic collisions or other tragedies since 2006.

Now it has achieved charitable status and it launched the latest chapter of its story in front of volunteers, beneficiaries and dignitaries including HM Lord Lieutenant of South Yorkshire and all four South Yorkshire Mayors.

The event, hosted at Irwin Mitchell’s headquarters at Riverside House, Sheffield, heard emotional stories from many of the people HOPE has supported.

HOPE Charity, which is supported by South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue, now wants to put its skills towards helping to prevent emergency incidents from happening in the first place.

It has already been commissioned to deliver road safety education packages to schools by the South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership and its volunteers are beginning to carry out home safety checks on behalf of the fire service.

HOPE Charity’s Business Development Manager Mary-Ann Quinn, said: “This event marked an exciting new chapter in our history, as well as reflecting upon our achievements over the last decade and more. We will continue to provide the peer support which our members value so much, but also believe that achieving charity status will broaden the range of support and services we are able to deliver. It’s been a real team effort to get this far and long may it continue.”

Deputy Chief Fire Officer and HOPE trustee Martin Blunden, said: “There is a natural synergy between the work HOPE Charity has been doing over a number of years to support people touched by tragedy, and the work that we do as a fire and rescue service to prevent emergencies in the first place.

“We recently published plans which set out our vision for how we will make local people safer. The aspiration we set out was to spread our resources much further by working with other agencies to meet the growing demand for preventative interventions. We believe HOPE, and other charities and community organisations like them, will continue to be important partners of ours in delivering this aim.”

Irwin Mitchell: Joanne Witherington, solicitor at Irwin Mitchell said: “We are committed to supporting the valuable work of HOPE across South Yorkshire and we were incredibly proud to host their launch reception at our Sheffield office.  It was a wonderful event and hearing first-hand accounts of how the charity’s services have helped families at such a difficult time in their lives highlighted, even more greatly, the importance of HOPE’s work.”

Last year HOPE was given the Duke of York’s Community Initiative Award. This is a Royal award presented to community projects based in Yorkshire which are owned, developed and led by the people they serve.

To find out more about the charity, visit its new website created by Millgate Connect, at www.hope-sy.co.uk

Whilst responding to emergencies and putting out fires will always be a big part of what we do, much more of our time is spent preventing emergencies in the first place. We need people with the right range of skills and attitudes to help us deliver this.