UK Police Memorial Trust launches fundraising campaign

24 April 2017

The UK Police Memorial Trust has launched a national public fundraising campaign to help raise funds to build a UK Police Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum (NMA) in Staffordshire.

The tragic events in London last month that saw the murder of PC Keith Palmer have put greater emphasis on the importance of creating a place where the nation can honour our police service and where family, friends and colleagues of those killed on duty, can carry out personal acts of remembrance.

The project has been ongoing for some time and so far the charity has raised £2.2million of the £4million needed to establish the Memorial. We are on the home straight, but now really need your help to promote the UK Police Memorial within your own force and more widely to your local population through your regional and local media.

The Memorial itself consists of four distinct strands:

• The creation of a physical memorial inscribed with the names of 1,800 officers and staff that will be placed within a remembrance garden at the NMA, where tributes can be made to all those who have died in service;
• A digital memorial that uses the latest technology for honour and tribute that can be accessed from across the world;
• An education programme – for use by schools and colleges - that tells the story of policing and its place in today’s society, with an acknowledgement to those officers and staff who have been killed on a specific day;
• A Living Memorial fund that aims to support the families of officers and staff killed on duty in the future.

Officers and staff can support the fundraising campaign in a number of ways including: making a donation of an hours pay per month over a year; giving a one-off donation; organising their own local fundraising events or taking part in pre-planned activity. Further details of how to get involved can be found at www.ukpolicememorial.org/forces 

Specific donations and tributes can be made to remember individual colleagues from a particular force or from the wider policing family.  Anyone making a donation or raising funds of more than £20 will receive a black and white chequered wristband inscribed with the words ‘courage and sacrifice’.