Hundreds Of Volunteers Apply To Be NHS Marshals At Guildford’s G Live And Cranleigh Village Hall

Published on: 12 Jan, 2021
Updated on: 14 Jan, 2021

By David Rose

More than 600 people have, over the past few days, applied to be NHS volunteer marshals to help with the Covid-19 vaccination programme at G Live in Guildford and at Cranleigh Village Hall.

Voluntary Action South West Surrey published details of the volunteering opportunities on its Better Impact platform within its website on Friday, January 8, and the applications flooded in.

A section of the leaflet issued by the NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, Surrey Heartlands, for recruiting volunteer marshals.

These are now being processed by staff at the NHS Clinical Commission Group, Surrey Heartlands, responsible for the GP-led vaccination programme at these venues.

As of Tuesday lunchtime, January 12, 540 of the volunteer applicants had been accepted, with the remainder being processed as quickly as possible.

Although many of the volunteer slots for January at the two venues have been filled, further volunteers are welcome to apply for later slots in February and March.

In general, the vaccination centres will be open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week and volunteers are needed to cover four shifts taking place each day, therefore many volunteers are needed.

The volunteering will be helping to direct people arriving for their vaccination, making sure they know where to go, dealing with any queries that might arise (with the support of a health professional), giving assistance where needed and helping to maintain social distancing.

If you would like to volunteer, you must click here to register for G Live.

And you must click here if you wish to register for Cranleigh Village Hall.

Caroline Keith, who is the volunteering development officer at Voluntary Action South West Surrey, would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has signed up to be a volunteer marshal at both G Live in Guildford and at Cranleigh Village Hall.

She said: “We have been overwhelmed at how quickly people have registered their interest, with 651 people having applied through our website so far.

“Although a lot of the shifts for January have now been filled, please continue to sign up as slots will become available when people are no longer able to volunteer for a particular shift and also further shifts will be added shortly for February onwards.

“Twelve volunteers a day, seven days a week are needed for each venue and people signing up can choose the shifts that they want to do, with each one lasting four hours.

“All in all, this amounts to a huge amount of time that people have given freely to help with the vaccination programme and everyone involved is immensely grateful to each and every volunteer that has signed up.”

Voluntary Action South West Surrey is the official CVS (council for voluntary service) for the boroughs of Guildford and Waverley. Its website and its volunteer recruiting system have provided a quick, efficient, one-stop platform to enable NHS Clinical Commission Group, Surrey Heartlands, to receive and process volunteer applications at speed.