MP jumps from 15,000 feet to help Cambridge hospice
She has continued to campaign for the hospice after funding cuts were planned
An MP has flown from 15,000 feet high to help support a Cambridge hospice.
Pippa Heylings took to the skies to complete a tandem skydive in aid of Arthur Rank Hospice Charity (ARHC), which she has tried to protect from NHS funding cuts.
Ms Heylings - MP for South Cambridgeshire - joined Sharon Allen OBE, CEO of ARHC, Charlotte Horobin, CEO of Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce and Jen Richardson of Project Cambridge Podcast, to jump from Chatteris airfield as part of the hospice's charity skydive programme.
"Arthur Rank Hospice means so much to so many across our region," Ms Heylings said.
"This is such an important cause and so I’m delighted to have smashed my fundraising target.”
Future still 'uncertain'
From the jump, £6,239 was raised for the hospice, which had been at risk of losing nine of its 23 inpatient beds due to cuts of £829,000.
But in January, a campaign to save the beds had raised enough money to keep them open for another 12 months.
Speaking to us after the beds had been saved, Ms Allen said the aim was to find "long-term, sustainable funding" for hospice care in the UK.
"We do not want to be in this same position in a years’ time," she said.
"The future is still uncertain, and the ending of this service would, without doubt, have huge implications for our local community and must be protected at all costs.”
A spokesperson for the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - which pulled the funding due to affordability issues - said it was "delighted the fundraising campaign has raised enough money to keep the nine beds open for another 12 months."
Last autumn, Ms Heylings alongside fellow Liberal Democrat MPs Ian Sollom, Charlotte Cane and campaigners handed in a petition to Downing Street signed more than 15,000 times, calling to scrap the cuts.