Christopher Wellbelove DL

As an assessor for this year’s Kings Award for Voluntary Service (previously Queens Award), the Representative Deputy Lieutenant for Lambeth visited Hatzola Trust in Hackney. Representatives who become assessors purposively do not access organisations in their own borough. Their role is to access the suitability of the organisation for this prestigious award.

Hatzola is a community-run charity that provides emergency ambulance services to the North London area. Their team of volunteers, who are all medically trained, work alongside local hospitals and the London Ambulance Service to respond to emergency callouts free of charge and provide medical assistance, including transportation to the hospital.

Trained call handlers pick up the phone within 10 seconds and they will glean all the critical information from the caller in under 60 seconds. Responders are dispatched using their private vehicles with their own personally allocated state-of-the-art equipment.

The first two closest responders will drop whatever they are doing and respond to the emergency. They are aimed to be at the patient’s side within 2 minutes for the most critical patients. A third responder will make their way to the ambulance bay and take an ambulance to the incident address.

Those successful in attaining an award will be announced on His Majesty’s birthday in 2023.