PEOPLE living in an isolated village are forming their own team of life savers.

Residents of Marston Meysey have just won a grant of £1,000 to install a defibrillator on the wall of their community centre.

But they are planning to take things a step further by running regular training sessions to teach others resuscitation.

Kirsty Payne, one of the people behind the project, said: “We are a really isolated community. It would take an ambulance about 20 to 30 minutes to reach us from Swindon.”

“Everyone has been really, really positive about it.”

Having lost her own father to a heart attack 17 years ago she was firmly in favour of the idea and when she heard about Wiltshire Council’s community grant scheme she immediately applied to the Royal Wootton Bassett and Cricklade area board for £1,000 to put towards the £2075 cost of a defibrillator.

The bid succeeded and now, as well as the machine, the volunteers are buying extra training equipment.

She explained there was a large number of older people living in the village and some had health problems. Marston Meysey also suffered with a poor mobile phone signal.

She also had the experience of losing her father 17 years ago. “This was before the time of community defibrillators. I just think it is quite important that if somebody’s heart did stop we have this.”

It could even mean the difference between life and death.

“I thought it might be something really good to put in the middle of the village.”

Locals got together and organised a series of events to raise money for the kit, which uses an electrical charge to re-start a heart.

“We all join in and help each other out,” said Kirsty. “Virtually the whole village has joined in.”

"The whole community is really happy that we've been given this grant. We're a very close knit community with quite an aging population and we all help each other out.

“When one of our lovely residents needed daily hospital treatment recently we all took it in turns to take her to hospital and set up a rota. Everyone wanted to help out so much that there was a waiting list to get onto the rota.”

The fundraising campaign also had a donation from the memorial trust set up in memory of Katie Haines, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning six years ago and whose parents live locally.

One the equipment is installed it will be monitored by the residents.