A PAIR of potentially life-saving devices have been installed at different locations in Oxenhope.

Oxenhope Parish Council has had the publicly accessible defibrillators fitted at Oxenhope's Keighley & Worth Valley Railway (K&WVR) Station and in Leeming.

They were bought with the help of funding from K&WVR, Royal Arch Freemasons, Oxenhope Straw Race, village residents and the parish council.

An Oxenhope Parish Council spokesman said: "In the UK, around 75,000 people lose their lives due to sudden cardiac arrest every year.

"Swift access to defibrillation improves survival rates from less than three per cent to over 75 per cent.

"Community Public Access Defibrillators, or cPADs, are being installed across the UK in areas like Oxenhope and Leeming, where ambulance response times are longer than average.

"In Oxenhope, just 43 per cent of life threatening calls are responded to within the eight minute target response time.

"Having researched the subject extensively, the parish council purchased two state-of-the art defibrillators that make it easy for anyone, including untrained members of the public, to respond confidently and appropriately during an emergency.

"The devices include spoken and video instructions. One is now located outside the exhibition shed at Oxenhope Station and the other is in a disused phone kiosk at Leeming."

The defibrillators are registered with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service. Callers to 999 where a cardiac arrest is suspected are directed to the unit and given the code needed to access the machine.

Oxenhope Parish Council has applied to the National Lottery Awards for All Scheme for grant assistance to acquire two further units.

It is proposing to install these in the centre of the village and in the disused phone box in Marsh Lane.

Anyone with an interest in making a donation towards this project is invited to contact Janet Foster at the parish council.