The brave volunteer coastguards who risk their lives for £11 an hour - soon to be cut to ZERO after a legal wrangle, finds JANE FRYER: Hundreds will die - and people will quit as a result

By JANE FRYER FOR THE DAILY MAIL Published: 23:47, 3 July 2026 | Updated: 23:48, 3 July 2026 For Britain's 3,060 Coastguard Recovery Officers patrolling our 1,000 miles of coastline, the last week has been business as usual. Up in Lancashire, members of HM Coastguard at Fleetwood plunged into the choppy waters to save a group of 20 teenagers stranded beyond the seawall, hauling them all to safety and some off to hospital. In Cardigan Bay in Wales, CROs helped the RNLI to save the pilot and passenger in a microlight aircraft after it crashed into the sea. Elsewhere, teams from Poole and Selsey rescued two divers in severe difficulty in a boat off the Dorset coast. Meanwhile, a major sea operation was launched off Horden Beach in County Durham, to save a distressed swimmer caught in choppy waters 200 yards out. And a fisherman cut off by the tide at the bottom of a steep cliff on the Solway Coast in Cumbria was also rescued. 'We do it all,' says Martin Alton, a retired deputy headteacher and station manager who gives up many hours a week to his community in Hunstanton, Norfolk.  'Medical emergencies, strokes, heart attacks, broken legs, some people suffering from dementia, others threatening to jump.' A crew member being winched down from a HM Coastguard rescue helicopter in Folkestone, Kent A HM Coastguard helicopter crew pictured during a training exercise in Dover Members of the coastguard preparing for a simulated emergency situation in Folkestone harbour Last Saturday his team dealt with two unexploded Second World War shells on the beach, a stroke victim and another person who had suffered a heart attack. 'It was a very long day,' he says. Every 'shout', it's the same. 'Whoop, whoop, whoop', a mobile alert buzzes to signal an emergency and, day or night, Britain's highly trained Coastguards Rescue Officers drop everything. They jump out of bed. Leap out of the bath. Down tools at work. Step away from family dinners and hotfoot it from school shows into sun, rain, sleet and snow to emergencies along our coastlines, but also on lakes and amid floods, inland. 'I've left dinners, parties, I once walked out of a church in the middle of a wedding,' says Martin Groom, 59, who became a coastguard when he was 19. 'You can't not go. It's not what we do, it's who we are.' John Neal, a self-employed plumber based at Amble in Northumberland, routinely has to leave jobs part way through. 'I have a lot of tricky conversations with my clients because emergency calls never, ever, come at a convenient time.' Coastguard members grabbing gear out of a search and rescue pick-up truck as they keep an eye over the rough seas A helicopter crew member takes his helmet off on a clifftop in Dover during a training exercise Coastguard search and rescue personell take a break next to the River Tyne in Newcastle Perhaps unbeknown to most of us – I was certainly in the dark – HM Coastguard is the fourth blue-light emergency service offered when you dial 999. Live in a coastal area and you'll have seen them racing past your door in the station Land Rovers or their own cars, roaring off to help someone at the worst moment of their lives. But live in a city and you might not know. Or that, just like the police, fire or ambulance services, HM Coastguard is a government body – not a charity like the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution).  But also that, unlike the other services, the CROs (who tackle most emergencies within 50 metres of the beach, leaving anything further out to the RNLI) are all volunteers, entitled to a token remuneration of just £11 an hour, up to three hours, for call-outs and essential training.  But, otherwise, they are risking their lives to save others out of the goodness of their hearts. Or at least they were. Because now, thanks to an extraordinary decision by the Maritime and Coastal Agency (MCA), the coastguards' governing body, this tiny payment – which represents just 1.5 per cent of the MCA's annual budget – is being removed. 'From September, they want us to do it all for nothing. Nothing!' says Martin Alton.  The decision came after the MCA said it needed to 'change how the service operates'. That followed the Court of Appeal upholding a ruling that classed volunteers as 'working' while carrying out their duties. This in turn meant they would be entitled to more rights – so they have been moved to a new unpaid volunteer model. Last month, the CROs were told in an online meeting that they would no longer receive remuneration from September and would instead move to this 'revised volunteer model' to protect the future of the service. It has left coastguards reeling. 'It makes us feel completely unappreciated. It's laughable,' says Jim, from the south coast.  A team of HM Coastguard search and rescue team members wearing their blue high-vis overalls A coastguard holding a placard that says: 'I stand with coastguard rescue officers' 'Particularly under a Labour government who said in their manifesto that they were going to protect workers' rights. It doesn't make sense.' But more importantly, they say, it will be dangerous. 'The impact will be catastrophic – on numbers, morale, availability and most of all, safety,' says Martin Alton. 'They are gambling with safety and there is no doubt that people will die as a result.' He's right. According to several surveys, if the changes go ahead, at least 60 per cent of coastguards will leave and many more will cut down their hours, leaving many stations dangerously undermanned or forced to close. Of Martin's team of 13, five, including him, would definitely leave, several are sitting on the fence, and the rest will be forced to reduce their availability. Which means that those left won't be safe to do the job properly. 'It takes six people to carry a stretcher across a beach safely,' he says. 'You need to feel safe when you're tied to a line, going over a cliff.'  Which is why, on Wednesday, a group of CROs travelled from Wales, Scotland, the south coast and all over, to attend a parliamentary debate and protest outside Westminster and urge Keir Mather, the 28-year-old Maritime Minister, to reverse the decision and save lives. I met them and they are an extraordinary bunch – the sort of people the rest of us should aspire to become.  Giving, generous, courageous and selfless. Men and women, ranging from a young lad of 23, to old hands in their early 70s, who possess an extraordinary sense of duty and community.  Some, like John the plumber and Kevin Taylor, an ambulance driver from Berwick-upon-Tweed, have full-time jobs that they somehow work around. Others like Jason, a former policeman and, Professor Richard Harvey, station officer at Holbrook in Suffolk, are retired.  Most joined to give something back to their coastal communities, to keep them safe – even though the majority of people they are saving are not local. Another coastguard in Westminster holds a sign above his head that read: 'I'm backing our coastguards' A coastguard patrol member in a safety helmet and high-vis in Falmouth, Cornwall A coastguard helicopter crew member treating an injured person in Portland on June 22, 2023 'We live here, we know the area, we know the terrain, we know how dangerous it can be,' says Dave from west Wales. Pippa Unwin, a sculptor from Devon, was rescued by the RNLI years ago and wanted to repay the favour but is a terrible swimmer. 'So I joined coastguard because it's a bit like mountain rescue by the sea,' she says. Six years later, Pippa, 60, is the head of her station. Kelly Stockdale, a university lecturer, joined two years ago after moving to Eyemouth in Berwickshire and witnessing the importance of their work. 'It is a big commitment,' she says and explains that while none of them do it for the money – 'I could make more doing a paper round' – the small stipend makes it possible. For Kelly, this means buying her kids an ice cream and treating her family every so often to make up for the endless things she misses, particularly in the busy summer months when teams can get 20 calls a week. For the self-employed, it reduces the cost of rushing away from a paid job and allows them to justify being on call more. To lose any of them would be a crying shame. Not least because many stations have more than 100 years of highly specialised experience between their members.  'In the six months I've been a coastguard I've had more and better training than I had in 40 years in the police force,' says Jason. Everyone does a week-and-a-half of initial training – which they get the £11 an hour for, but won't from September.  Along with two extra hours' training every week – which they all do voluntarily.  Plus specialist sessions including First Aid, rope training, mud rescue, clifftop rescue, stretcher carrying, winching, all according to the local terrain and topography. Because different stations face different challenges. The area around Liverpool is one of the busiest, with more than 440 call outs last year. Everyone is flat-out in the summer which, for all, means routinely skipping that glass of wine at a barbecue or a pint in the pub with your mates, just in case. Thankfully, there are plenty of joyful days – finding lost children on busy beaches, rescuing people stranded by the tide, saving dogs, cats, even cows. But there are a lot of challenges, too. What they all call 'despondency' is on the rise all over the country, along with all sorts of mental health problems. I meet several members of the Birling Gap station. Last month they assisted with the tragic case of the three sisters who drowned at Brighton Beach. They also cover Beachy Head, one of the UK's infamous suicide spots. 'We tend to have a better success rate than the police in talking them down,' says John from the South coast. 'But it's not always a good result.' There are other horrors, too. 'Sadly sometimes cars do literally go off the cliff.  And the people who go up and pick up the pieces – and they are literally pieces – have a very tough time,' says Andy Hunt, from Bembridge coastguard station.  Not surprisingly, the coastguards with no cliffs thank their lucky stars, but as Martin Alton tells me, some still find a way. 'Maybe a bottle of vodka on the beach first. Or they just walk out into the waves,' he says. 'Sometimes they've been in the water a long time. It isn't easy. Some shouts can really linger.' Because as Kev the ambulance driver explains, this isn't like other emergency services. So while they all support each other and have an amazing camaraderie, they don't go back to the station and hang out and talk about it afterwards. 'We go home – back into our lives. Which can be hard. Sometimes I sit quietly in the driveway for a bit before I head back in and get on with my family life,' he says.  But for all that, my guess is that most of this lot would actually do it for nothing – so long as they felt valued and respected. And that's where the problem lies. Because, they say, the way the MCA have handled everything is deeply worrying.' The main issue is we don't want to work for an organisation that treats its workers like this,' says Martin Alton. For decades, the terms of their engagement have been ridiculously muddled and chaotic. The CROs are volunteers, but they get paid and so pay tax on their earnings. They have teetered between workers and volunteer status, with questions around holiday entitlement, pensions and dismissals remaining murky. There are more quirks, too. Coastguards are not encouraged to publicise what they do, aside from safety information days at schools and fetes – for fear that so many people would call on them they wouldn't be able to cope. They are also firmly discouraged from talking to the Press. And, until Kelly set up a collective bargaining group last month which has exploded with new members, the stations had no contact with each other – other than with their 'flank' station, on either side along the coast.  'I think they hoped that, because we're all around the country we are not in touch with each other,' says one coastguard from Cumbria. But for a long time, despite recruitment being tricky, it all worked brilliantly and many lives were saved and the Coastguard Recovery Officers were happy. 'We were a highly trained, highly motivated, skilled team who've always loved what we do and that's why we do it,' says Martin Alton. Sadly not any more. 'None of it has been handled very well,' says Martin Groom. He should know, because he's right at the crux of it. The Court of Appeal case related to his dismissal back in 2020, after 35 years of service as well as him being awarded long-service and good-conduct medals. 'Leaving was gut-wrenching, one of the hardest things ever – I still miss it every day,' he tells me. A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesman said: 'This is not something we wanted to do but is a consequence of the Court of Appeal ruling.' So now our fourth emergency service is on the cusp of being destroyed. The irony is that this was an opportunity for the MCA to ensure that these extraordinarily brave men and women were properly remunerated, appreciated and, most importantly, retained. 'They are blaming the Court of Appeal for all this, but they could have used the opportunity to make the service better, rather than undermining it,' says John Neal. 'So now it looks like we'll be looking over our proverbial cliff, come September,' says Andy Hunt. And if the MCA don't listen to the desperate warnings of these men and women, Britain's coasts will become far more dangerous for us all. The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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