PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE The 2018-19 year and season have been an eventful and testing one for Surf Life Saving Northern Region (SLSNR) management and the region’s 17 clubs. The huge increase in beach attendance, which often belied the sometimes-adverse weather conditions, put the lifesaving movement in our region under significant pressure, and demographic and population projections for the Region suggest that beach-going numbers will continue to grow.
enables us to both track our activities and also enhance safety for our volunteers through the likes of radio-based, GPS tracking security.
The other welcome development is the move to rebuild lifesaving facilities throughout the region. Driven by our volunteer clubs, the rebuilding programme has seen robust investment in the aged infrastructure, including our own at Sunset Beach, that desperately needed it. Investment in our facilities reflects the For SLSNR, this poses significant challenges to meet that need acknowledgement that to do the job we are charged with doing – a both in terms of having the volunteers with the right skills and very essential emergency services function – we not only need experience to provide services at the beaches and having the right great people, but we must have adequate facilities and equipment to support their facilities to support their work and ensure efforts. The organisation understands that the health and safety of our volunteers. it will need to critically review the locations WHILE THE NEXT for future service provision to ensure those ONE-TO-FIVE YEARS WILL BE I am hugely heartened by the progress services are best aligned to public need. AS CHALLENGING AS THE in that area as well as the support of LAST FEW, I FEEL CONFIDENT our partners, Toyota Financial Services, Therein lies the biggest challenge for us WE CAN SUSTAIN AND GROW Yamaha Marine and Yamaha Motor, and as an organisation – and it’s one that faces THE LIFESAVING MOVEMENT the incredible support they provide to our many not-for-profit organisation in this IN THE NORTHERN REGION lifeguards on the frontline. country: maintaining a volunteer workforce AND ATTRACT AND RETAIN THE And while the next one-to-five years will sufficient, in our case, to meet the demands of our beach-going public. The people VOLUNTEER FORCE WE be as challenging as the last few, I feel using our most popular beaches have an NEED TO KEEP OUR confident we can sustain and grow the expectation that there will be yellow flags up BEACHES SAFE. lifesaving movement in the Northern Region and lifeguards on hand to keep them safe. and attract and retain the volunteer force we It’s not a negotiable thing in their eyes but very few understand the need to keep our beaches safe. complexities - funding or otherwise - involved in the provision of such a professional volunteer service. Our clubs and the public can rest assured we have plans in place to respond to our workforce pressures and will not stint in Recruiting more volunteers is becoming increasingly difficult and addressing the challenges ahead. that is something we will be focusing on over the next 12 months. We will be working hard to ensure our clubs get the people in place, particularly at the top level, to get them through the next few years when demand for lifesaving services will be substantial. Such increases have a big impact on lifesaving; all those new families have recreation needs and our beaches are popular places to visit and play at.
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Another noticeable trend filling media headlines is SLSNR’s increased presence in the search-and-rescue sector. Our work is no longer just about helping swimmers at our beaches stay out of trouble or rescue them if they do; Police now frequently task us to assist them and that can be at any time of the day or night. This is seen right across the Region. The year just been has also heralded a number of promising developments for lifesaving as well, however; in particular, we are seeing the fruits of digital technology developments that have been slowly gaining pace over the last decade. The digital radio move towards a paperless world for services like ours has finally gained traction and we are seeing exciting new technology which
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SURF LIFE SAVING NORTHERN REGION ANNUAL REPORT 2019
Malcolm Beattie President
OBE