Life saving equipment will now be held at Ash Sports Pavilion and members of the community have been learning how they could help in an emergency.

Ash Rugby Club, Queens Road, hosted a training session last Thursday to demonstrate its newly acquired defibrillator.

This piece of equipment sends an electric current through the chest which can re-start the heart back to its normal rhythm.

Community First Responder Ryan Truelove met with representatives from Ash Parish Council, Ash RFC and Ash Cricket Club to demonstrate how to use the defibrillator and how to perform CPR.

Dave Stephens, treasurer of Ash RFC, came up with the idea of obtaining a defibrillator. He said: “As a rugby club we heard about the life of a man saved at Canterbury RFC using their defibrillator, and thought we should have one too.

“Hopefully we will never need to use it, but if we do, we know we have access to one and we know how to use it.

“We felt it was a really worthwhile piece of kit to obtain and have access to for the Ash community, which is why we bought the box and fixed it to the outside of the Pavilion so that anyone can use it at any time – the Pavilion doesn’t have to be open.”

Mr Stephens applied for a grant through Dover District Neighbourhood Forums and was awarded £1,200.

The club then added its own funds to purchase the life saving equipment.

The unit has also been registered with South East Coast Ambulance Service which means that in an emergency anyone can ring 999, ask for the ambulance and they will be given the code to open the box to access the defibrillator. The service will stay on the phone and advise until an ambulance arrives on the scene.

First responder’s are volunteers in the community who are first on the scene when it is vital to start treatment as soon as possible, before the ambulance has arrived.

There is a shortage of volunteers, with none in Ash and the nearest one in Sandwich.

Mr Truelove said he wanted to give something back to the community and explained it was very rewarding - he had lost track of the number of lives he had saved.

For more information on becoming a Community First Responder visit www.secamb.nhs.uk.