Sarah Atkins, of the East Anglian Air Ambulance Executive Team, said: “We’re absolutely delighted that Norwich City Council have unanimously approved our application to extend and renovate our Norwich base. We’ve been working on this project for a long time as it is crucial in enabling us to realise our ambition of being operational by helicopter for 24 hours a day in the future. This will transform our operation and the level of care we will provide across the region.

“Getting the planning approved is a very important milestone and means we will be able to start pushing ahead with the new base build in early 2020. We’re hugely grateful to all of our supporters who keep us airborne and have being instrumental in helping us raise the additional million pounds we will need each year to fund the extra flying hours.”