This is provided free of charge and operates 365 days per year . Typically the hours of service would be 7pm in the evening through to 6am Monday to Friday , with 24hr cover provided at the weekend and bank holidays . The weekday ‘ evening only ’ timeframe reflects the fact that most of the volunteers have daytime jobs too . Each volunteer might offer to cover one or two nights per month , so it ’ s really a case of ‘ many hands make light work ’. All of the NABB member groups offer a similar service free of charge and we receive no Government funding , with all running costs coming from local fundraising initiatives . ( Hint here .... please donate if you can ! ?)
However , the NABB story started a little later , back in 2008 , when my local group had been operational for about a year or so . We had gained an enormous amount of understanding and experience in how to start a new group . Topics such as starting a charity , registering with the Charities Commission , recruitment policy , operating procedures manual , Service Level Agreements with the hospitals , mandatory GMP training , temperature validation tests etc , etc had to be understood and addressed . So , along with a few other like minded people , Gordon Downie ( Severn Freewheelers ), Mike Belch ( Freewheelers EVS Bristol / Avon ) Tim Goodman & Dean Wickham ( SERV ) we met to discuss our experience and to see if we could work towards a ‘ best practice ’ workshop , capitalising on our different approaches and experiences . Realising that what we had between us was a unique model that could be applied in other areas , we decided to embark on a 5 year plan to inspire , promote and support the start up of new blood bike groups across the UK . Thus the Nationwide Association of Blood Bikes ( NABB ) was born .