David Philpott interviewed
Above: David Philpott
Above: David Philpott, Jill Playle, head of fundraising and pilot, Kevin Goddard
Above: .
Many of us had a ‘Millennium moment’, but for David Philpott, 2000 was the year his life changed for ever. Having spent the past 20 years working in Tanzania in support of his missionary first wife (“being Denis to her Margaret Thatcher”), it was time to take stock, and to make some radical changes.
“I found myself on Millennium Eve sitting on a mountain in Africa, aged 42, and it was a seminal moment,” he recalls. “The 90s as a decade had passed me by – I was almost lost in Africa. It was time to come home and do something for me.”
So, with just his lifeskills in hand – “I didn’t even know how to switch on a computer” – David homed in on what he was good at: communication. A radio station in Essex was looking for someone with experience in charity work to lead their charity drive across eight stations – and David’s profile fitted the picture.
“I left my wife, and Africa, and found myself in a world I didn’t particularly like,” he admits. “I loved the product of radio, but inside it was corrupted by egos; there wasn’t much support for the charitable community focus I had been brought in to oversee.”
A new launch
What the station was excited about, though, was getting involved in trying to launch an Air Ambulance in the region. David realised he could fulfil his remit by embracing one charity rather than many. “I threw my weight behind the Air Ambulance people, and the rest is history,” he laughs.
“We developed a successful charity, which is still ongoing today. I made a name for myself and was flattered when I was asked to throw my hat in the ring upon the retirement of Kate Chivers, who founded the Kent Air Ambulance Trust in 1989.”
And so it was that this Bromley lad who had left his home town in his twenties for a life overseas found himself (and his ponytail – shorn now, although an earring remains) back in the county of his birth in 2003.
The first challenge was realising the charity was in enormous deficit and only had 200 flying days in the bank – “we were facing serious financial hardships, but we turned it around.”
And turn it around he did. The new chief executive launched the Trust’s first ever five-year Strategic Plan in 2005 and the charity began to trial the introduction of specialist pre-care doctors on the Kent Air Ambulance, based at Marden.
Regarded as a radical idea, David was adamant the way forward was to “turn our service from an ambulance that could fly to a doctors’ delivery service. Then we would really make a difference.” Specialist doctors now fly on every Air Ambulance mission.
And it was under David’s leadership that the Kent Air Ambulance charity expanded into Surrey and Sussex in 2006. A completely new and additional Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) was launched from Dunsfold Park in Surrey a year later.
David also formed the Association of Air Ambulance Charities, which he chairs, because he felt “we needed a voice to start getting heard.” Although he says he was “initially an irritant, and very unpopular” in the role, the upside is “we now have £5.2 million in reserves in Kent, which has enabled us to look at best practice around the world and invest in research.”
David insists none of this would have been possible without the “fantastic” management team he’s built up, and the support of his “incredibly gifted board of trustees, who understand what we are trying to achieve.”
He adds: “Because I’ve got so many fantastic experts around me, it’s allowed me to go and meet the politicians, to go overseas and talk to the experts. We’re probably the most dynamic Air Ambulance service in the world right now.”
It’s never been done before, but from 1 April the Sussex Constabulary will provide air support until 1.30am with one of our paramedics on board
It’s a bold claim, but the facts bear him out – none more so than the introduction of Air Ambulance cover at night. “It’s never been done before, but from 1 April the Sussex Constabulary will provide air support until 1.30am with one of our paramedics on board their helicopter,” says a delighted David.
“This means anyone in Kent who suffers a violent attack at night or is in a car crash will have Air Ambulance support from a police helicopter.”
David has also successfully tackled the tradition in Britain, dating back to the 1960s, that if someone was in an ambulance, they would be taken to the nearest district general hospital. What he saw in Europe was Air Ambulances taking the patient to the specialist hospital best suited to their needs – so the Kent service began to start flying people to specialist hospitals in London.
“This was seen as controversial because we were taking patients from Kent out of the county, which had an impact on the Primary Care Trusts, so we found ourselves coming into conflict with the whole NHS political establishment,” recalls David.
Thankfully, that has changed. “Now, three years on, the whole way pre-hospital care is being delivered is changing; we have a fantastic dialogue with the ambulance service, the funding commissioners and all the hospitals are supporting us.
“Out of all the 999 cases that come in, we as a service do make life and death differences every day,” he stresses.
“To put it into perspective, the ambulance service across our south-east coastal region deals with half a million 999 calls a year, –we will attend 2,000 of those – but, in the incidents we go to, at least half have life and death outcomes, and that is significant.”
Saving souls
David is a staunch advocate of Air Ambulance not being state funded (it is covered entirely by public donations) and says he sees it as “the RNLI of the air.”
He explains: “Years ago, our grandparents and great-grandparents would support the RNLI because their husbands and sons were plying their trade on the high seas. Today, people support Air Ambulances because our husbands and sons are plying their trade on the M25, trying to get to a sales meeting. It’s the same mechanics.
“That independence, the fact that we get no National Lottery funding or state funding has allowed us to do what we like, and that’s put the patient first.”
Currently, £3.3 million is raised on the charity’s behalf every year by fundraising, and I ask if David feels the service will continue to get the level of public support it needs? He smiles: “So long as we don’t take our public for granted, and we continue to give our supporters what they expect, I’m confident that, a bit like hospices that started 20 years before us, there will always be sufficient funds.
“However, where it’s changed is when we started to put doctors on board our two helicopters – the clinical cost to us is about three quarters of a million a year. So we have started gently pressuring the government and saying you can’t expect charity to keep paying for all these expert clinical costs.
“Hospices get approximately 34 per cent of their core funding from the NHS, and my ambition is that in about 12 to18 months time, we would be in the same position, on the condition we didn’t have to surrender our independence.”
It’s been an incredible five years, so what is it that continues to attract David to the role? “What I love,” he says, “is that you think the world has changed and that people have changed – but there are still thousands of groups out there in the community who thrive and exist on raising money for charity.
We have started gently pressuring the government
“Because we are an attractive cause, which does what it says on the tin, we get chosen by these groups, and as long as we give them what they need in terms of literature and support, they will come back year after year. They do the fundraising, as long as we give them the story – and it’s all about the story, the human element.”
So what’s next?
“Organ retrieval will be the next big thing,” David says. “Once an organ has been identified we want to be able to fly a specialist team in to pick it up and get it to the patient in a specialist hospital.
“We’re also looking at critical care transfers, for example, if all local hospitals are full and we have a critically ill patient coming in, flying that patient from, say, a lit helipad in Kent to a lit helipad in Essex that has an ITU bed.”
He adds: “Our future is making helicopters at the forefront of emergency delivery, and working in partnership with the different NHS Trusts without compromising our independence. Independence is non-negotiable.
“We will never take their shilling if it means that my board are in any way restricted by that funding. This is the Kent Air Ambulance, paid for by the people of Kent for the people of Kent.”
So what’s it like being back in Kent? “It’s been a joy to reconnect with old friends,” David tells me. He married for the second time last year, and he and Karen now live in Ashford, which he describes as “the cultural epicentre of Kent”. He’s not joking.
“It’s a old market town that has lots of new people moving in, all of whom are looking for a sense of belonging, and people are joining things and looking to belong – there’s a real café culture developing.”
He also loves the fact that “within 30 minutes I can go in four different directions and get four different Kentish experiences – I can go to Tenterden, the jewel of Kent, to Folkestone, English Victoriana at its best, I can go east and be in the birthplace of Christianity, and then there’s Maidstone, the county town – I always enjoy being there.”
David, who turns 50 in May, says he is relishing being stepdad to his wife’s three grown-up children (and now a step-grandson), loves local Kentish beer, loves the diversity of Kent as a county, and even loves his journey across country from Ashford to Marden every day.
So life is good, then? He laughs his agreement. “I’m happier now than I’ve ever been, I’m always saying, isn’t life wonderful, it’s never going to get any better than this.”