A LACK of life-saving equipment in Oxford available round the clock has sparked an urgent call for action from the county's 'Mr Defibrillator'.

City businesses are being called on to act now as the city centre welcomes an influx of extra visitors due to the Westgate Centre - but there are no 24-hour publicly accessible defibrillators known to paramedics.

Dick Tracey, a former ambulance commander for South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), has led a one-man crusade to bring hundreds more of the life-saving machines into the county.

But despite working with the community to get more than 500 devices installed around the county since 2014, he says the many listed buildings in Oxford's city centre makes it difficult to put defibrillators in publicly-accessible areas.

He said: "It is something that clearly needs to be addressed and very quickly with the numbers of city visitors, shoppers and tourists coming through now."

Recent statistics from the Westgate Shopping Centre revealed if the number of shoppers continue, the centre is expected to pull in 18 million visitors in its first year.

The Westgate currently has four portable defibrillators but are either only accessible during opening hours, or via a security guard after hours.

Mr Tracey said SCAS currently has no records of city centre defibrillators that the public can access 24 hours a day.

The nearest logged with the emergency service is Summertown - some three miles away.

Mr Tracey said: "Summertown is far too far away."

He added: "Unfortunately, with most of the buildings listed in the city sticking a big yellow box on the side of them wouldn’t work.

"So, as a starting point we need to know where the defibrillators are in Oxford's centre.

"We need to know who owns a defibrillator, in which shop or office and then record that because should there be a cardiac arrest SCAS would then be able to say where a defibrillator is in the area.

"If somebody died outside a shop or office and there was a defibrillator we didn’t know about inside, that would be awful."

The campaign - backed by the Oxford Mail - is urging city centre businesses to log the details if they have one of the life-saving machines.

The Save a Life app, downloadable from the App Store, logs all reported defibrillators and is used by SCAS to direct the public to in the case of an emergency.

Mr Tracey said by mapping all the defibrillators in the city centre he will then be able to pinpoint buildings and areas that are in vital need of a defibrillator.

The ongoing campaign hopes to eventually bring about enough of the machines to ensure nobody is ever more than eight minutes from a device.

Other city centre defibrillators include one at the Town Hall, Critchleys LLP in Hythe Bridge Street and The Randolph Hotel, and there are time limits to all three of them.

Mr Tracey retired almost a year ago from SCAS to focus on the defibrillator campaign and has since trained about 1,000 people in resuscitation and to use the life-saving devices.

Among those was Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth, alongside his council colleagues.

He urged everyone to take part in the free training, adding: "If you see someone laying on the floor, before I would have questioned what to do and how to interact with them.

"But given the training I am now confident to make sure they are in the recovery position and if I felt it was due to a cardiac arrest I would contact 999 and be able to use a defibrillator."

Mr Hudspeth said as a result of the recent training the council is looking at installing a public defibrillator at its offices in New Road.

He added: "I am fully supportive of getting more units in as many publics places as possible to enable first aid to be administrated as quickly as possible. The sooner it is, the greater the survival chances are.

"It is pretty impossible to put them up on listed buildings but I think we can find innovative ways of placing them. In several villages they have put them in old telephone boxes or we can look at where would be the best locations – maybe somewhere like church porches.

"It has got to be in an accessible location 24/7."

The council leader joined Mr Tracey in his calls for better teamwork among businesses in the city to record, map and install more defibrillators.

To register a defibrillator with the ambulance service contact defib@scas.nhs.uk or for group CPR and defibrillator training contact defibsoxford@gmail.com