About us

History

Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue (SULSAR) is a member unit of the UK’s Lowland Rescue service. Alongside Mountain Rescue, Cave Rescue, the RNLI and Volunteer Coastguard, we form the backbone of specialist help for the emergency services when anyone is in need of assistance.

Lowland Rescue teams specialise in finding missing people using foot-teams and dog-teams, often over large areas of wilderness and without knowing where the person is to begin with. Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue is a 100% voluntary specialist search team which helps the emergency services find missing vulnerable adults and children. We are on-call 24 hours a day, with a team of 60+ people to respond across Suffolk and surrounding areas. SULSAR is a registered charity and therefore we rely solely on donations and sponsorship. Although members are volunteers they require specialist equipment and therefore donations are vital. Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue is a registered charity, and receives no funding from government or the emergency services – we are wholly reliant on donations and grants from industry. All of our members are volunteers, and none of them are paid for their time, fuel or expenses. We are normally called out by Suffolk Constabulary, but we also respond to calls from the Fire service and other search teams in neighbouring counties.

Our specialist teams

Foot team

A foot team is deployed on most operational callouts. Every member of our team is tranied as a search technician first, learning the basics of land search.

Water team

SULSAR has the capacity to search by water, utlising our RHIB with outboard motor and kayaks. We have a specialist water rescue van that attends callouts where our water specialism may be required.

Drone team

As an organisiation, much investment has been given to our drone capability. Drones allow us to search with thermal camera in places that land based search teams might not be able  to reach.

Dog team

Within SULSAR, we have an integrated dog team, NSARDA Suffolk. The dog team train regularly and asisst with both area search and trailing operationally.

Bike team

Searching by mountain bike allows a search team to quickly cover ground and scour routes and paths for the missing person.

Search Management team

Our search management team are not only responsible for the planning and execution of the search, but also for the welfare of our teams on the ground. Our control van provides a central hub for search operations.