Lifeboat charity branch sunk by fall in volunteers

THE Wargrave and Twyford fundraising branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution has closed after more than 50 years.

Committee members made the decision after volunteer numbers failed to recover following the coronavirus pandemic.

In recent years, volunteers had proposed merging with Reading, Sonning and Henley branches but there was no support for it.

Chairman Paul Blair, of Watermans Way, joined the committee in 2017 after taking over from Michael Porter, who was in the role for about 30 years.

Mr Blair, 70, said the branch faced difficulties after the national charity’s financial resources dropped by £28.6m in 2018, forcing the branch to change its fundraising approach to a commercial one the following year.

Regular events included car boot sales, collections at Waitrose and garden centres in the area, including Dobbies Garden Centre in Hare Hatch, running a stall at the Twyford Christmas fair and fundraising dinners.

Mr Blair said: “We have lots of people who volunteer and help us out with [logistics] like car parking but the core group needs 10 to a dozen people to make it tenable.

“We have had no problem with people putting their hands in their pockets to support for charity but finding people with the energy to inject into the committee and to the operations became difficult.

“We dwindled to about four or five people to the end. We’re all past retirement age — into our seventies and beyond.

“We didn’t lie down without putting up a bit of a fight but we needed new blood and there wasn’t any.

“We agreed the current committee couldn’t carry on in that way so we decided to stop.

“Our branch turnover has fallen since covid and, given the efforts required to generate a relatively small return, the focus of the organisation is undoubtedly being directed elsewhere.

“The nature of the RNLI since I took over has changed and it’s a lot more corporate and we’re not the only branch who has this trouble.”

He added that he was “deeply disappointed” to see the branch close in his tenure but is grateful for the community’s support.

Mr Blair said: “I would like to thank all of those who have worked on the committee with me over the last eight years and to all the volunteers who have shaken buckets, acted as car park attendants and helped with many other tasks.

“Over the years, the branch has been incredibly active and raised many thousands of pounds for the charity which as only been achieved through the tireless work of successive committees and the support of an army of volunteers.”

When Mr Blair took over as chairman he said annual events and collections could generate between £10,000 and £12,000 a year. However, their last year in operation saw contributions total about £2,500.

He said: “Covid didn’t help and we calibrated a lot of things. We never properly recovered after that.

“We went to a meeting of different branches in the area very early on in my tenure and one of the groups there was going through exactly what we were and they were saying they didn’t have enough people.

“It made me think, ‘my committee is moving towards that position’ and that’s when I started to talk to people at the RNLI to see if they had any other ideas but they couldn’t run a recruitment campaign in our area.

“We put up notices and made it clear that we needed people but we didn’t get any response.”

Former chairman Mr Porter said: “It’s not unique to Wargrave, it’s very sad to see it happen but it seems to be regrettably the way things are now nowadays. It’s interesting how much support we got from people. Although we were living a long way from the beach.”