HEART OF THE COMMUNITY

Our lifesaving defibrillator campaign

We’re on a mission, through our Charitable Trust, to install defibrillators outside over 50 of our pubs. St Austell Brewery owns over 180 sites across South West region and we want to ensure that many of the communities, local to our pubs, have access to a lifesaving device.

55 of our pubs are in areas which do not currently have access to a defibrillator. If you’re planning a visit to one of our managed houses, you can help save lives by purchasing a portion of fish & chips (25p per portion will go towards the Heart of the Community campaign) or scanning a QR code on one of the pub’s posters. You can also donate through our Just Giving page here. We will match fund every £1 that is donated.

In the UK as many as 100,000 hospital admissions each year are due to heart attacks - that's 260 admissions each day or one every five minutes. It’s estimated that around 1.4 million people alive in the UK today have survived a heart attack - around one million men and 380,000 women.

We have partnered with the Ronnie Richards Memorial Charity to buy the defibrillators. Co-founders Paul and Liz Williams set up the charity in memory of Liz’s brother Ronnie who sadly died from sudden cardiac arrest whilst playing his beloved game of football at Penzance Leisure Centre. The charity has been fundraising for defibrillators to be installed in schools and public places all over the Duchy for many years and train young people how to use the devices.

Piers Thompson, St Austell Brewery’s External Relations Director, said: “We’re really excited to be working with the Ronnie Richards Memorial Charity and launching this campaign to ensure public access defibrillators are available to many of our pub’s local communities.

“We have sites in some of the most popular places in the South West and often in remote locations, whether that be in the countryside or on the coast. Installing lifesaving devices in over 50 of our sites is very important to us and more importantly, it will increase the likelihood of lives being saved.”