In an emergency call 999 and ask for Police then Mountain Rescue

Scottish Mountain Rescue and our 26 Member Teams spend around 1.8 million annually combined running our life saving service, however in reality the cost is actually higher, because many team members also donate items of their own equipment, or their petrol costs in addition to their time in order to keep the service running.

Scottish Mountain Rescue

How Scottish Mountain Rescue spend our funds

Scottish Mountain Rescue spends the funds it receives on supporting our 26 member teams.

In the year ended 31 March 2023 our expenditure percentages were as follows:

*Insurance includes vital personal accident insurance for volunteers, keeping them safe during call outs

*SMR Coordination costs includes the costs of running Scottish Mountain Rescue

Team expenditure

How funds are spent across our 26 member teams

The total spent by our member teams each year is around 1.4 million.

Every team has slightly different needs and therefore each team will have slightly different expenditure priorities and needs. In addition expenditure can vary considerably from year to year, depending on the new items of equipment and other requirements that teams might have. However on average a team might typically spend their funds as follows:

You can find out more detail about each team on the team website. Links to team websites can be found on our team pages

Funding needs

On average each rescue costs £1,800, the cost per rescue has been reducing in recent years due to the increase in rescues. This means that now each team need to stretch their resources further as they are called out more often.

Our 850 volunteers across our 25 Member Teams give many hours of their time to save lives.

The teams give their time for free but we need funding to support the running of Scottish Mountain Rescue, so that we can help the teams to offer the best possible rescue service to all who need them and to provide the teams with the training, insurance and equipment they need.

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