More than 16 million people in England and Wales live more than a 1km round trip from the nearest defibrillator that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 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.

A defibrillator is a device that can shock a person's heart back into a normal rhythm when it suddenly stops beating, a emergency called cardiac arrest. When someone collapses in cardiac arrest outside a hospital, every minute matters. The faster a defibrillator is used, the better the person's chance of living. That is why experts recommend being within a three- to five-minute brisk walk of one.

The study looked at 318 local 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 area 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 only area where every resident falls within the recommended window. Hartlepool is the next closest, with 77% of residents within that range.

The gaps are stark in specific places. 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" — areas with critically thin coverage — including Barking and Dagenham, Liverpool, Southampton, Nottingham, Wrexham, and Newport, as well as parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Early CPR (chest compressions) and defibrillation can more than double the chance of surviving cardiac arrest. The Resuscitation Council UK's 2025 guidelines say the annual rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in England is 54 per 100,000 people, with about 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 rates 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 — 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 more devices are being used, the access gap is still wide enough to limit how many lives are saved.

The BHF has responded with a community defibrillator campaign inviting local areas throughout the UK to apply for 400 24/7 community defibrillators. That number is small compared to the scale of the problem the research reveals. 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 placed in the best locations, would only help a fraction of those affected.

The research also raises a question about the existing defibrillator network's accessibility. 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 difference between the number of defibrillators physically installed in communities and the number actually available to someone at the moment of cardiac arrest is not captured in total device counts. Coverage, in this framework, depends on both where devices are placed and whether they are accessible around the clock.

The broader context here is that the local-level detail of the Heart Restart data gives policymakers a map of where the access gap is most severe. Whether that leads to targeted deployment, more devices registered on the national network, or changes to building rules 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.