The SARA Lifeboat Station at Sharpness is housed mainly in the Old Dock House at Sharpness. This building has been our base since 1996, and is home to two small lifeboats, a hovercraft and the operations room for the team, who are called out 20-30 times per year. The building needs urgent repairs, which are essential to keep our lifesaving boats and kit in good condition.

All the rescue equipment such as drysuits and swiftwater and flood rescue equipment for the 28-strong volunteer crew is stored here. There is a crew room for refreshments after callouts and training. The teams landrover lives outside the front door, ready for deployments away from the station, and there is a crane which winches the rescue boats straight down to the river. The team's larger new lifeboat lives in a purpose-built boathouse 100m away, along with its dedicated launch tractor.

The Old Dock House is a Grade 2 listed building, leased by SARA, and it sits in a prominent location which means that it gets lashed by the weather. It is now in desperate need of repairs before the winter. Over the years the volunteer crew members have made running repairs to the building but specialist help is now required as the repairs needed to maintain the building to a suitable standard are outside the skills of the crew.

It needs new windows as water ingress is causing damage to the station interior. Most interior walls facing the front of the building require major damp proofing and re-plastering due to damp, the external render on boathouse wall requires repair as significant areas of which have blown and fallen off, and the exterior walls need repair. In additional the sliding doors on the station boat storage area, and on the station garage area require repair or replacement, and the garage area requires a new roof. We estimate that the total cost of repairs is in the region of £25,000, and are essential to keep our lifesaving boats and kit in good condition.

There has been a SARA Lifeboat Station at Sharpness since 1985, which was housed in a cargo container and a portacabin for its first 11 years. The RNLI do not cover rivers (only operating on the Thames since 2002) and the first SARA station was established at Chepstow in 1973. The Sharpness crew are called out both to people and vessels in distress in the River Severn and to support the Police with other water searches across Gloucestershire, and they have been deployed on several such callouts during the Coronavirus lockdown period.