Brokers provide vital aid for heart charity
SOUTHPORT based mortgage brokers sprinted to the aid of local heart screening charity Vital Signs Foundation (VSF) to help screen young people for undiagnosed heart conditions.
After weeks of fundraising, staff from The Buy to Let Broker raised enough to fully fund the charity’s latest screening where VSF was able to race past its own milestone by screening its 3,000th young person since starting in 2006.
After hearing how client Steve Haw lost his son, Chris Haw, to sudden cardiac arrest aged just 25, the team at The Buy to Let Broker was moved to take action and help raise the funds the charity, set up in Chris’s memory, needed to screen up to 100 young people in the North West aged 16-35.
Over the past few weeks, the mortgage advisers and case managers took on the challenge of running/ cycling more than 1,000 miles in a virtual tour of their biggest UK lending partners, raising awareness of the charity and its £3,000 target.
After weeks of fundraising and hours on the treadmill, the team reached both goals and raced past the finish line with a day to spare.
VSF founder Steve said: “We were blown away by the lengths The Buy to Let Broker went to in order to fully fund one of our screenings.
“One thousand miles is no mean feat, we can’t thank them enough for all of their support and for providing such a wonderful venue for our event.
“To have reached our 3,000th screening is an incredible achievement for the team and we have been humbled by all of the support that we received along the way.
“In almost every screening that we deliver, we come across one or two people who require further tests for potentially life-threatening heart conditions, so to be able to help them get the medical attention that they really need is exactly why we set the charity up.”
The mortgage specialists also offered full use of their office in Southport to accommodate the event last weekend, where over 95 young people, including members of the Buy to Let Broker team, received blood pressure tests, heart scans as well as life-saving education in CPR and defibrillators.
Matt Hardman, codirector at The Buy to Let Broker said: “Steve has been a client of ours for a few years now so when we found out about the incredible work they are doing, we wanted to help in any way we could.
“As a national broker, we work with every UK lender currently on the market and wanted to get as many of them on board.
“Therefore we calculated if we circumvented the UK to 16 of our top partners including Kent Reliance, Paragon and BM Solutions that we would have to cover over 1,000 miles from Glasgow to Bournemouth and back again. This gave the team a clear target to work towards.
“I am immensely proud of our team’s response to the challenge, everyone really stepped up to the plate to help scratch off the miles and promote the inspirational work that VSF are doing.”
To find out more about the work of the VSF, visit www.vsf.org.uk