As a member, you’ll join a dedicated group of volunteers who are passionate about serving their community during times of emergency.
You’ll have the opportunity to support local authorities, emergency services, SAR teams and other volunteer agencies. Whether it’s transporting essential personnel or delivering supplies, your efforts will make a real difference in people’s lives.
Develop your leadership, management, public speaking, and more!
We understand that everyone has different availability. As a volunteer, you can contribute as much or as little time as you can afford.
As a member, you’ll receive your PPE, ID cards, and stickers. These items signify your affiliation with our charity and enable you to carry out your duties with professionalism and confidence.
Wessex 4×4 Response is a Registered Charity comprising unpaid volunteers dedicated to providing emergency logistics for the Category 1 & 2 organisations, in support of our communities. We operate within the Avon & Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire & Swindon Police forces’ areas. Our liaison team is active within the Local Resilience Forum in each force area and we can also support other regions under mutual aid.
Through the use of our volunteers’ own 4×4 vehicles, we can provide those logistics regardless of weather, ground conditions and location. We have included some examples below.
All of our Responders at Wessex 4×4 Response are unpaid volunteers, who are giving up their time to support their community. They are all subject to enhanced DBS checks at regular intervals, and will have gone through a variety of training courses based on their role. They will also bring a huge variety of experiences and skills from their day jobs and their previous experiences.
They will be driving their own vehicles, with a variety of vehicles in use ranging from the latest vehicles with only a few thousand miles on the clock to older vehicles that have driven the world.
Depending on the scale of the incident, we may deploy bronze or silver leaders to the incident, or embed liaison advisors into your operational cell to provide a live link between your need and our operations.
If the scale and type of incident is appropriate, we can also deploy our Incident Support Unit trailers to provide onsite command and control facilities, as well as responder welfare.
As all of our responders are unpaid volunteers, when the alarm goes, they will almost certainly be in the middle of their normal life. We are not a blue light service, so our responders will typically take a few minutes to change clothes, grab kit, make a flask of tea, and ensure the children have been handed off to someone else before they get moving.
Our record is 6 minutes from first contact with our control team, raising the job, getting availability, tasking responders to the first vehicle marking as en-route, but is more typically around 20-30 minutes.
What a fantastic evening at the Midsomer Norton Carnival last week! On Monday from 4 pm to 11 pm, our dedicated team of 9 volunteers worked tirelessly to support road closures and ensure a safe and smooth flow of the…
This week, several of the Wessex 4×4 Response team, along with other organisations were invited to a recognition and engagement event organised by Avon and Somerset Police for volunteers who were involved with the flooding incident response in East Somerset,…
We’re delighted to share our recent involvement in the Weston Hospice Moonlight Beach Walk. Six of our Responders convened at the pier for an initial briefing at 18:00, before driving along the 5km and 10km walking routes. Our team was…