More than 16 million people in England and Wales live more than a 1km round trip from the nearest 24/7 accessible defibrillator, according to research published by the Heart Restart campaign and reported exclusively by The Guardian on July 22, 2026. A broader measure is even starker: 35 million people, more than half the population of England and Wales, do not live within the recommended three- to five-minute brisk walk of a defibrillator.

The study examined 318 local authority areas across England and Wales. In 264 of them, more than half of residents were not within the recommended three- to five-minute reach of a 24/7 defibrillator. With the exception of the City of London, every local authority in the two nations has at least some residents living at least 10 minutes' round trip from their nearest 24/7 device. The City of London is the sole area where every resident falls within the recommended three- to five-minute window. Hartlepool is the next closest, with 77% of residents within that range.

Geographic disparities are pronounced. In Harlow, more than 70% of people are at least 10 minutes away from their nearest publicly available, 24/7 accessible defibrillator. In Birmingham, nearly half a million people live more than 500 metres from the nearest 24/7 unit. The British Heart Foundation, which runs the Heart Restart campaign, has identified specific "defibrillator deserts" including Barking and Dagenham, Liverpool, Southampton, Nottingham, Wrexham, and Newport, as well as parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Early CPR and defibrillation can more than double the chance of survival from cardiac arrest. That clinical baseline gives the geographic data its urgency. The Resuscitation Council UK's 2025 guidelines place the annual incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in England at 54 per 100,000 people, with approximately 115,000 such events occurring across the UK each year (Resuscitation Council UK). In 2024, English ambulance services attended over 96,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, according to the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE).

Survival figures remain low. Research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that in January 2024, 7.8% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients in the UK survived to 30 days. The London Ambulance Service reported that between April 2023 and March 2024, 40 patients, or 0.3% of cases, were successfully resuscitated using public access defibrillators or other non-LAS devices. Public defibrillation in England did reach its highest recorded level in 2024, according to the AACE, suggesting that while deployment and usage are increasing, the access gap remains wide enough to blunt the clinical benefit at population scale.

The BHF has responded with a community defibrillator campaign inviting local areas throughout the UK to apply for 400 24/7 community defibrillators. That figure is modest relative to the scope of the access gap the research lays out. If 16 million people live beyond a 1km round trip from a 24/7 device, and 35 million are outside the recommended brisk-walk window, 400 additional units, even optimally placed, would address only a fraction of the identified shortfall.

The research also raises a question about the existing defibrillator network's accessibility profile. The data focuses on 24/7 accessible devices, which means units locked inside buildings during evening and overnight hours, or those not registered on a national network, effectively do not count toward coverage. The discrepancy between the number of defibrillators physically installed in communities and the number available to a member of the public at the moment of cardiac arrest is not captured in total device counts. Coverage, in this framework, is a function of both placement and around-the-clock accessibility.

The local-authority-level granularity of the Heart Restart data gives policymakers a map of where the access deficit is most acute. Whether that translates into targeted deployment, expanded registration on the national defibrillator network, or changes to planning requirements for public buildings will depend on decisions at both national and local government levels. The BHF's 400-unit offer is the most concrete immediate step, but the scale of the gap suggests that closing it will require coordination across health systems, local authorities, and private-sector partners who control many of the buildings where devices are or could be housed.