STA has officially kicked off its 2025 community-led charity campaign, Community HEART STArters, by confirming that the first recipient of a life-saving defibrillator is LED Community Leisure LTD; a charitable leisure trust that operates 16 facilities, including three with pools, across Devon and Somerset.

With a focus on the importance of defibrillators in saving lives, the Community HEART STArters campaign aims to raise awareness and provide lifesaving resources to UK leisure and aquatics-based charities in 2025. This first donation of a defibrillator to LED marks the start of many more to come this year.

LED, which serves over 10,000 members, enjoys over 1 million visitors per year, and facilitated 170,000 swims last year, recognises the essential role of defibrillators in ensuring the safety of their patrons. Many of their leisure, health and community venues are already equipped with defibrillators, but they still have a few smaller venues where they are reliant on equipment that is some distance away should something happen.

Dave Candler, STA’s CEO said: “Defibrillators are proven to save lives, and this donation will have a direct impact on LED’s ability to respond quickly in the event of an emergency. We know from speaking with LED that this contribution to their charity at a time of increased operational costs is invaluable and will help save lives – the sole purpose behind our Community HEART STArters campaign this year.”

A defibrillator, often called a ‘defib,’ delivers a high-energy electric shock to the heart of someone in cardiac arrest. This process, known as defibrillation, is a critical step in attempting to save their life. Defibrillators may also be referred to as AEDs (automated external defibrillators) or PADs (public access defibrillators).

Each year in the UK, over 30,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, with emergency services attempting to resuscitate them. Unfortunately, the survival rate is just 1 in 10. However, if an AED is used within the first three to five minutes, survival rates can rise dramatically, reaching as high as 50 – 70%.

Dave added, “As these statistics show, defibrillators are crucial, and through Community HEART STArters, our aim is to support more charitable leisure organisations like LED this year, and ensure that even more communities across the UK have access to these life-saving devices.”

As part of the campaign’s year-long ‘Uniting Communities and Saving Lives’ theme, STA will also require all successful applicants to register their donated defibrillators on The Circuit – a service provided by the British Heart Foundation. The Circuit is a UK-wide mapping system that connects defibrillators to ambulance services, ensuring that callers can be directed to the nearest available defibrillator while waiting for emergency services to arrive.