New station for Isles of Scilly Coastguards

A new Coastguard Rescue Station is to open on St Mary's next week.

The purpose-built facility, on the Porthmellon Business Park, will be officially opened on July 11th.

The new station will 'help Coastguards to train more efficiently, improve response times and help them to work even more closely with the other emergency services,' said the Maritime & Coastguard Agency in a statement.

It has a large garage, a training room, a crew room, a kitchen, shower, toilet and drying room, described as 'a far cry from the small garage and room in a bungalow which used to make up the team’s facilities'.

“I am really pleased to have been asked to open the new Coastguard station next week,” says Richard Parkes, Director of Maritime Operations for the MCA. “It’s a great new facility which will certainly support our Coastguards with all their important work across the islands.”

Richard Williams, Senior Coastal Operations Officer, added “The new station is closer to the beaches and has a large training room which is really going to help us to train for the search, water and rope rescue work that we get involved with.

"As well as being the base for our St Mary’s team it will also be used as a hub for our other island teams in St Agnes, Tresco and St Martins. It’s a great resource for our island teams and the fact that it’s located so close to our colleagues in the other emergency services is the icing on the cake.”

The St Mary’s Coastguard Rescue Team has 12 members who are volunteers based within the local community. The team is often involved with assisting people who need to be evacuated to the mainland and is trained to search for missing people and to rescue people from the water and from the cliffs.