SARA provides the official inshore lifeboat cover for the Severn Estuary and tidal River Severn below Gloucester, and the tidal River Usk; areas not covered by the RNLI.

There are 5 lifeboats, 2 each at Beachley and Sharpness, plus one at Newport. Sharpness also operates a hovercraft for conducting rescues on the mud flats and sand banks of the Severn. Lifeboats are launched within 10 minutes of a call from the Coastguard. Lifeboat crew carry pagers and are on call 24 hours a day, every day. The nature of callouts includes vessels in distress or aground, persons seen in the water or those at risk on one of the several bridges in SARA’s area.

Teams from Beachley, Tewkesbury, Wyre Forest and Cotswolds undertake open area searches for high-risk risk vulnerable missing people on behalf of the police forces in Gloucestershire, West Mercia and West Midlands. Principally, these are people with some form of dementia or are despondent or vulnerable, or occasionally simply lost for whatever reason.