During and immediately after World War One, the Red Cross provided short-term wheelchair loans for both injured servicemen and the general population. The service proved to be very popular. By the time the NHS was established in 1948, we were the go-to organisation for short-term wheelchair loans. Today we are the largest national provider of short-term wheelchair 1 loans, operating from around 250 sites across the UK. We loan wheelchairs as part of our mobility aids service, which loaned 111,000 items of equipment in the UK in 2014. The majority of those items – 83,000 – were wheelchairs.2 We loan wheelchairs to both children and adults, although the majority of people who borrow our wheelchairs 3 are aged 65 years and older. People can access the service in a number of ways, including via an online portal, by telephoning our Area Offices and by visiting local Red Cross loan sites. Red Cross staff and volunteers are often based directly in hospitals and medical centres, working with medical staff to respond to humanitarian need. Our wheelchairs are loaned free of charge. We are grateful to receive donations from 80 per cent of those who use the service (MacLeod, 2015), but we nonetheless spent over £1 million on our mobility aids 4 service in 2014; a service that is dedicated primarily to short-term wheelchair provision. These costs are primarily property costs. We own some of the sites from which we provide the service, but in many sites we pay rental costs for space from which to loan out wheelchairs, including some hospitals and general practices where we work collaboratively with health care professionals. These rental costs can amount to tens of thousands of Private Wells at Normanhurst using a Red Cross short-term wheelchair loan pounds per year. during WWI © British Red Cross 1 Other charities also provide short-term wheelchair loans. These include Age UK, Shopmobility, St John Ambulance and Disability Action. 2 The other items were predominantly commodes, but also included rollators, walking sticks and other mobility aids. 3 Internal data capture and reporting. 4 Including the rental costs of space from which we loan out wheelchairs. 2