Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust has been chosen to light the official beacon for the NHS to celebrate The Queen's Platinum Jubilee.

The Trust is now working with teams at Tameside College to make it a very special event.

Welding students at the college are being given old and broken hospital beds and, with the help of design colleagues, will fashion them into a crown-shaped beacon fit for the occasion.

Instead of the traditional gas flame, and in keeping with the Trust’s green agenda - the distinctive blue of the NHS will shine across the giant metal sculpture in a spectacular laser and light display.

Trust Chief Executive Karen James OBE says it's a great honour to have been chosen to fly the flag for the NHS at such an important event in our history.

She says: “We will never see an occasion quite like it again. A platinum anniversary is a remarkable achievement and to be a key part of it is wonderful for both the Trust and the college. Planning is under way to make it a night to remember.”

College principal Jackie Moores says she was delighted when the Trust approached her to get involved.

She said: “Our welding and design students are excited to be asked to create a unique beacon which will be worthy of such a royal occasion.

“It will be something they will be able to tell their children in years to come, that they made a metal beacon for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to celebrate our wonderful NHS.”

Bruno Peek LVO OBE OPR, Pageantmaster of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Beacons, said: “I am thrilled that the spotlight will be on Tameside and that the NHS and college students will come together to create something stunning and unique. The Queen has been a light to the country for 70 years and this will be a fitting tribute to her extraordinary reign.”

The Tameside beacon will be one of more than 1,500 from across the UK and the Commonwealth being lit on Thursday, June 2, 2022 culminating in the lighting of the principal beacon, at Buckingham Palace.

The national timetable for June 2 is as follows:

• At 2pm hundreds of town criers and 50 Pearly Kings and Queens will announce a specially-written Proclamation heralding the lighting of the beacons later that evening.

• At 9.35pm local time across the UK and Commonwealth, traditional and Northumbrian pipers and pipe bands will play Diu Regnare, a unique tune specially written for the occasion by Piper Major, Stuart Liddell, the world’s leading piper.

• At 9.40pm buglers linked to local beacon lightings across the UK and capital cities of the Commonwealth will officially announce the lighting of the beacons with a specially bugle call, entitled Majesty.

• Then at 9.45pm exactly local time, and to coincide with the lighting of the beacons, community choirs across all nations will sing Song for the Commonwealth, which has been written and composed by Lucy Keily, from Australia and Vincent Atueyi Chinemelu from Nigeria.

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