Former mayor named air ambulance ambassador

Steven Webb said the air ambulance saved his life after he was paralysed in a diving accident when he was 18

A county councillor who was paralysed in a diving accident as a teenager has been honoured by the charity that was instrumental in saving his life.

Steven Webb, the former Truro mayor who was recently elected to Cornwall Council, was made an ambassador of the Cornwall Air Ambulance Trust.

The air ambulance flew Mr Webb from Truro City Hospital to a specialist spinal unit in Salisbury in 1991.

In September Mr Webb raised more than £10,000 for the trust by travelling 500 miles (805km) across Cornwall's coastline in his electric wheelchair.

Webb said the charity "means everything to me".

"They were so instrumental, I probably would not have survived if I didn't get to Salisbury," he said.

"I had to go into intensive care and have a tracheotomy, if I wasn't in that spinal unit I probably wouldn't have made it.

"I will always champion them, what an amazing charity, they saved my life and they've saved so many lives."

Mr Webb joins the charity's other ambassadors, which includes television presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, business owners Dr Karen Dickens, Rob Harris MBE and Jackie Stanley DL and chefs Paul Ainsworth, with his wife Emma, and Gordon Ramsay, with his wife Tana.