Brighton lifeboat volunteer up for award

Dan Gurr, 28, has volunteered for Tower Bridge and Brighton RNLI for over 10 years, dedicating up to 30 hours per month to help to save people who have found themselves in difficulty.

Dan decided he wanted to volunteer when he was just 15, after a family member showed him round the boats, and he couldn’t wait until he was 18 to sign up.

Now he is on call 24 hours a day, and when he is paged he has to down tools and go.

Working across two stations in London and Brighton his rescue missions are varied, from injuries on party boats to helping vulnerable people in need. He was selected from hundreds of entries and has been named as one of seven finalists in the JCB Heroes campaign. The winner and two runner ups will be announced by the end of the month.

Workwear specialist JCB Workwear, launched its JCB Heroes campaign, a national search to find heroic tradespeople who volunteer their time to help charities, good causes or local community groups last month. The winning entry will be recognised for their hard work with a special award and a 12-month clothing sponsorship worth over £500.

Professional tradespeople or those who work in the construction or agriculture industries were invited to attend and say why they deserve to win.

Dan said: “I enjoy being part of a team, everyone is good friends and it is like having a second family. The work is very rewarding and completely different to my day job! It is great to see volunteering work recognised by a company such as JCB Workwear and I hope that this campaign will inspire more people to give their time to help others.”

Joanne Dyson from JCB Workwear said: “We know that tradespeople often volunteer for services such as the RNLI or use their skills to help community groups with costly repairs and maintenance. We wanted to find these unsung heroes, who play such an important role in their community and say thank you! It has been very difficult to whittle the entries down to seven and picking an overall winner will be especially hard as I believe that all seven are heroes! Good luck to Dan and the other six contestants.”