Largs Community Resilience team was officially launched on Sunday when around 60 townsfolk pledged support for the group.

The volunteers attended the launch event hosted by Largs Community Council, who first proposed a local resilience team around a year ago.

Representatives from a range of organisation were also present to show support.

They heard Largs Police Inspector Michael Oates congratulate the community council for taking the initiative to set up a community resilience team.

Inspector Oates said he looked forward to working with the group.

“It’s all about local people helping themselves and that is the way forward,” he said.

Kenneth Gibson MSP congratulated the team, saying: “When called upon I believe that you will do an excellent job on behalf of the local community.” Mr Gibson, who attended with newly elected SNP councillor Grace McLean, said he had been closely involved with the community response on Arran during the March blizzards of 2013 and he knew the importance of communities helping each other in this way.

George Douglas, the community council secretary who chaired a sub-group that worked to establish the team, ran through some typical scenarios which the resilience volunteers might encounter, including flooding and blizzards.

Team co-ordinator James Bertram told the News: “We had 58 volunteers at the event and I was contacted on Sunday night via Facebook by townsfolk who had not been able to get to the meeting so I think it would be fair to say we are easily about the 60 mark.

“The launch event was attended by Police, Fire and Rescue, Ambulance, Coastguard, RNLI, Largs First Responder Unit, Ayrshire Civil Contingencies Unit, North Ayrshire Council officers and church representatives.

“Rev David Watson, from Clark Memorial Church, and Father Eamonn Flynn from St Mary’s, have agreed to be resilience chaplains. Father Eamonn could not attend on Sunday but the chaplains are now written into our plan to assist with any major incident and will be getting issued with ID badges and special hi-vis jackets marked “Resilience Chaplain”. I think that’s fantastic and it will be a tremendous support to families in a time of crisis.” Mr Bertram, himself a Largs first responder, added that their draft emergency plan had now been shared with Police and Ayrshire Civil Contingencies and he wanted to develop that further over the coming months involving other local responders and agencies.

“I think it’s fantastic what’s been achieved in a relatively short period of time,” he said.