Public use Defibrillator (Latimer village)

Andrew D King

The old BT public telephone box in Latimer on The Village road is now a Public use Defibrillator. I'm in two minds over this upcycling idea. Yes, it gives the old attractive red BT box a new practical use, unlike the one in Chipperfield which is pretty but empty. I feel the phone box should remain an active phone box, especially when it was the only one in the village and rural mobile phone signals can be transient. Now if you are a stranger and suddenly find you need the use of a defibrillator, you could look at this box from the little village Green and just see a red BT box. Your mind would just see what it expects to see and that's not a defibrillator, so be ignored. The attention grabber sticker on the phone box door is small and dark green, so rather useless in its purpose. The attention grabber sign needs to be big and yellow and shout at you what it is and be very visible from The Green where strangers are likely to gather. Maybe a good idea would be to get a proper big yellow attention grabber sign, mount it to the monument on The Green with a little direction sign advising the Defibrillator's position in the phone box, as they are within line of sight of each other. The Defibrillator's cabinet has text boxes to contain the Cabinet number and location Postcode. Both have been left blank (see my photo), but are required by the 999 switchboard operators to provide the code to open the cabinet. And no, indelible marker pen ink is no long term use as it fades away in sun light, use a proper self-adhesive printed label. There is also no evidence of who owns or is responsible for the device in the event of problems or any damage. Parish Council please take note. Please LIKE if you found this review helpful thank-you

like

Report