Dunton Green Parish Council has purchased, installed and will manage ongoing a FIFTH Public Access Defibrillator (PAD) for the benefit of residents in Dunton Green.

This time we thank The Miners Arms for their support of the Parish Council's project to see defibrillators covering more areas of the village, by allowing us to install the cabinet and defib on the front of the pub.

This new defibrillator is in addition to ones on the shopping parade (thank you to The Bed Post), the Village Hall (thanks to the Management Committee), the Gym Building at Ryewood (thanks to Berkeley Homes) and the one on the side of the DG Pavilion in the recreation ground. We also thank the Sevenoaks Community Responders who check the defibs regularly for us (in addition to our own weekly checks). The Parish Council takes its responsibility for these units seriously: they are registered on The Circuit which is the national database that the emergency services use to advise people where a defib is near; we replace batteries and pads before they expire and we monitor their status weekly.

Some of you have probably noticed damage to the cabinet at the Village Hall. Thankfully, this sort of criminal damage to our defibrillator cabinets is pretty rare. The defibrillator itself was unharmed and is in the Parish Council's safe hands. A new cabinet should be being installed this weekend, with the defib being returned to serve that area of the village.