MEET the team of volunteers who won’t give a second thought to cancelling plans or pushing their mounting piles of work to one side to help search for a missing person.

Cheshire Search and Rescue comprises a group of Good Samaritans who are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and are ready to deploy at any time, in any weather condition.

When pensioner Keith Taylor, 76, was reported missing days before Christmas, Simon Lane, who was the search manager on the incident, rushed to support police with the operation.

The 46-year-old from Wilmslow said: “It was really cold but the biggest thing that stuck in everyone’s memory was the number of people saying he was a lovely bloke.

“Everyone knew him and everyone had nice things to say and were asking how they could help.

“Even for the hardest members it was touching and it inspired us to keep on going.”

Last year members logged 18,649 hours in training, fundraising and callouts – but it doesn’t cover other work such as admin.

“It’s often very unglamorous,” said Simon.

“We aren’t dangling off cliff faces in Snowdon trying to rescue someone. It’s often hours of grafting in the rain but we have such an amazing team of people who will quite happily search all day.”

When a report of a missing person is called into police and a search operation is launched, managers for the charity are alerted to the incident who will then notify other members.

Cheshire Search and Rescue was formed in 2004 following the disappearance of a teenage girl and started as a group of individuals with little more than high-visibility jackets and torches. Today the team takes pride in being well-trained and equipped.

The running costs for the service are between £40,000 and £50,000 a year, but this is without extra funding for equipment and repairs.

“We get the odd pot of funding but everything is through fundraising,” said Simon who works in property investment alongside his brother who also volunteers for the service.

“Members pay subs and everyone provides most of their own equipment. We pay for our own fuel.”

To register as a volunteer visit cheshire-sarteam.org.