Closed petition: Make it mandatory to register defibrillators on a national database

Closed on 14 November 2025

Currently it is not mandatory to register a defib with any database. The emergency services can therefore be restricted when trying to direct someone to the nearest defib. One study shows that public-access defibrillators are used in less than one in ten out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK.

Research from a leading charity suggests that:
- Each year, there are over 30k out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK. But defibrillators might not be used because emergency services might not know where they are.
- Less than 1 in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK.
- Every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces the chance of survival by up to 10%.
- Over 100k defibrillators are registered on a national database, but tens of thousands might be unregistered.