A TEAM of mountain rescue volunteers is trying to raise money for a new dedicated base.

Duddon and Furness Mountain Rescue team, based in Foxfield, is looking for £400,000 to build a new centre to improve on its current home.

The team has been planning to move for 10 years and has already raised £200,000 of the £600,000 needed to build a new base.

Plans are afoot to move to an area of land close by the mountain rescue’s current stations.

The mountain rescue team serves people who come into difficulty across Furness and by the Duddon estuary.

Martin Cooper, the Duddon and Furness Mountain Rescue Team’s fundraising officer, said: “We are the only mountain rescue team in the area that is still renting a place.

“At the moment we are working from two garages and we need a dedicated station to help us.

“This would mean that members of the team would be able to do what they do for longer.

“It would also provide more space for visitors from other agencies, such as police, to come to our base.

“It would also mean we would be able to offer welfare facilities for the families of people we rescue.

“Currently we have a tiny kitchen but we want to be able to give people somewhere to keep items and have a cup of tea.”

The team relies on donations from the public and hopes to reach the halfway total of £300,000 during 2019.

After this, said Mr Cooper, the volunteers hoped to find grants to match that figure to reach the final target.

Soon architects will be drafted in to design the new building, which the team hopes to be able to operate from by 2021.

Mr Cooper said he was very grateful for the donations received by the public so far and appealed to them to offer support again.

He said: “People might not think that a small donations of £10 would help us get very far but actually most of the money we have received until this point has been those kinds of amounts.

“I would urge anyone to donate what they can to help us build this new facility.”

You can find out more about the rescuers at www.dfmrt.org.uk.