Surrey Air Ambulance will benefit from a £1.5m sum granted by the Chancellor.

George Osborne announced in his autumn statement on Wednesday, December 3, money will go to the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance.

It will go toward investment programmes for a new helicopter and future needs.

Chief executive Adrian Bell said "The Chancellor’s statement today in which he granted the Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance Trust £1.5m, is a very clear and ringing endorsement of the critical service this charity provides to its patients, and, as support to our capital investment programme, eloquent recognition of the need to ensure the long term resilience and sustainability of this vital emergency service funded as it is through charitable donation rather than NHS finances.

"As well as being extremely grateful to the Chancellor for this support, the charity is also hugely appreciative of his move to exempt all air ambulance charity expenditure from VAT. In our case, this will release about £100,000 per year directly to front line services rather than the Exchequer and equates to over 30 life-saving missions of the 1,800 that the charity undertakes annually."

The charity, which became the first air ambulance service in the country to operate a 24 hours emergency service last September, is celebrating its 25th anniversary next year.

In the first year of the night operations, crews attended more than 430 emergencies, in addition to 1,400 by day.