The record
Blackpool Council runs a Beach Patrol Service on its six miles of Lancashire seafront 365 days a year, reinforced through the summer season by seasonal beach lifeguards. The patrol's work is mostly preventative — giving safety advice over the vehicle's public-address system, dealing with first aid, searching for lost children and running the council's Beach Safety Education Programme in local schools — but it is also the council's first response to major incidents on the sands and works alongside HM Coastguard and the RNLI.
The patrol's principal vehicle for years has been a Land Rover Defender 110 station wagon. AE14 WGW, a 2014 car, is the vehicle documented in the catalogue reference: white, with a yellow high-visibility band along the sides carrying BEACH PATROL RESCUE lettering and the Blackpool Council roundel, yellow-painted grille panel and headlamp surrounds, a roof-mounted blue light bar, and a full-length galvanised roof rack loaded with a yellow rescue board, buoyancy aids and stowage boxes. It is photographed on the promenade outside the Beach Patrol Headquarters on Middle Walk, next to the tidal-information and seaside-safety boards. (Note: the catalogue reference records the registration as AF14 WGW; the photograph itself reads AE14 WGW.)
The council has publicised a replacement Land Rover for the service, fitted with the latest VHF marine radio giving a direct link to the Coastguard's Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre and with stowage for a wide range of lifesaving equipment; the replacement also supports Blackpool's major events programme and seafront enforcement work. A later Beach Patrol Land Rover carrying the registration PK70 LBP (a 2020 car) has been photographed at Manchester Square, and is noted as running on the reserved tram tracks under blue lights to get past promenade traffic. The 2014 vehicle's present disposal is not documented in the sources consulted.
