It does feel as if Christmas comes earlier every year these days and although I try to resist this movement myself, I am happy to acknowledge that once we edge into
December, we might as well embrace it and go with the mood and the flow.
Both our Centres are due to close on Friday 19th December this year for a well-earned break. Although that means that we have almost 3 more weeks to go as at the time of writing, I am confident that by the time we reach the end of 2025, we will have exceeded the highest number of patients that we have treated at the PTC in my time at the charity, and perhaps ever. I will be in a position to provide more specifics on the numbers and how they break down in early 2026.
Although the PTC will close for a Christmas break, all of us who work here are very conscious that serving police officers and staff will continue to be on duty throughout the whole of the festive period leaving friends and family at home, whilst they are out and about at work. If you are able, please do take some time for yourselves and your families.
We have finished the year with a flourish and as well as hosting a steady flow of visitors to the Centres including the Chair of the North Wales Police Federation, we also sent representatives of the PTC team to the Oscar Kilo Conference in November and the PFEW Conference which took place at the same time. That slightly stretched our staffing but both were important events that we were keen to have representation on.
We also had two dates in our diary last month for The Right Honourable Sarah Jones MP the new Policing Minister to come and visit our Harrogate Centre both of which were frustratingly cancelled at very short notice. We do acknowledge that Ministers are not always in charge of their own diary and politics can move at pace, but we have not given up and I hope to be able to update everyone in early 2026 on a re-scheduled visit that we now have in the diary for her to come and see us.
We hosted an Occupational Health Conference at our Harrogate Centre in November as well, in what is becoming an annual event. This was a fantastic opportunity to get as many members from the various OH departments from our constituent forces, together in one location to talk about how we get their officers and staff to one of our Centres as swiftly and smoothly as possible, once they apply for admission. There are always going to be frictions in the application and admission process to the PTC but the more that we talk to our stakeholders and partners, the more we learn about how best to mitigate these frictions, to provide the very best service to our future patients.
We were very grateful to be nominated as the beneficiary charity at the annual PTSD 1965 Ball again this year, driven by the force of nature that is Ben Pearson. The ball raised a record breaking 
£11,000 for the PTC. I do always plead with our police donors and partners to look inwards when thinking about who they might fundraise for if planning an event, so if you
are next year, do please think of a police charity such as the PTC or indeed The Police Children’s Charity (TPCC), Ben Pearson and his team delivered on this to the highest level.
We also recently hosted one of the regular meetings of the Police Charities UK forum at Harrogate and I also made the same point there. I am responsible for the PTC and TPCC but there are many other great police charities out there doing important work on behalf of police officers and staff. Please do not be shy about thinking about selecting one of these other great police charities if you do not want to fundraise for the PTC or TPCC.
Finally, I will end on some good news linked to grants and donations. I am very pleased to announce that the Scottish Police Benevolent Fund have just announced a large grant to the PTC. The SPBF have been huge supporters of the PTC in every way in the past, and this most recent grant will be used to improve PTC Auchterarder on a project we are currently developing in 2026. We are hugely grateful to the SPBF for agreeing this grant to our charity.
That’s it for this year’s set of blogs. Thank you all for your support throughout the year, do keep on donating to our charity and equally importantly, do apply for treatment when you need our
support.
If you are working over the Christmas and New Year, do stay safe. I hope you manage to get some time with friends and family and thank you all for your service.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
Patrick Cairns, CEO PTC
