The College has just taken delivery of a state-of-the-art defibrillator for use on campus by its team of trained first-aiders.

The machine was obtained through the Community Reslilience team at the Ambulance Service and Community Defibrilation Officer Neil Marsay visited the College to hand the machine over to health and safety offcer Anna Reed.

Anna said: “The College undertook a first aid review and because of the number and scale of some of the events we have on campus, a defibrillator was identified as a need, so I got in touch with the Ambulance Service to see if they could help.”

It is believed that a patient whose heart has stopped has the greatest chance of survival if they given CPR and treated with a defibrillator within eight minutes of collapse.

Neil Marsay said: “The unit works best when used with effective CPR and it can make all the difference to a patient whose heart has stopped beating.

“There are about 500 of these machines in use across Yorkshire already some of which have indeed saved people’s lives.”