{"id":695009,"date":"2026-07-16T15:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T15:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/695009\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T15:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T15:06:09","slug":"government-drops-plans-to-stop-paying-coastguard-volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/695009\/","title":{"rendered":"Government drops plans to stop paying Coastguard volunteers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Kelly Stockdale, a senior lecturer in criminology who is  also a coastguard rescue officer based in Eyemouth on the Berwickshire coast, told the BBC she was relieved that the minister had listened to their concerns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It is highly skilled work, we train for more than 100 hours to be a coastguard officer,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We continue that training with two hours every week and that&#8217;s what allows us to be able to respond when a call for help comes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She added: &#8220;Our main fear is if people were to leave because they couldn&#8217;t afford to continue to commit, they couldn&#8217;t lose that income, we&#8217;d not only have fewer people but also the skills and experience that would be lost.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paul Arkison, GMB Scotland senior organiser, welcomed the U-turn but said it should never have been necessary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;The work and commitment of Coastguard Rescue Officers could not be more important but had been needlessly risked by this ill-considered and self-harming plan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;These brave and skilled emergency workers do not do it for the money but the money allows them to do it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The decision to continue paying them for their time is welcome but should never have been necessary.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Kelly Stockdale, a senior lecturer in criminology who is also a coastguard rescue officer based in Eyemouth&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-695009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}