IF the £300,000 target for Bradford University's Plastic Surgery and Burns Research Unit (PSBRU) is reached - and, based on past experience, there's no reason to believe it won't be - it will bring the total amount raised for the organisation to more than £1m.

In 2010, to mark the 25th anniversary of the fire disaster, Bradford City joined forces with the T&A to announce a fund raising campaign for the Burns Unit with the aim of raising £100,000. By the time the counting stopped in 2011, the final figure totalled £167,775, 37p.

All the money donated in the past 30 years has been spent on 24 or more consultant plastic surgeons, paying them to do research and gain either a Doctor of Philosophy degree over four years or a Master of Philosophy qualification over two years.

Professor David Sharpe founded the unit after the Bradford City fire. It was started with a donation of £200,000 by Robert Maxwell, the Daily Mirror owner and communications millionaire who flew by helicopter to Bradford shortly after the fire. Private donations and fund-raising campaigns have maintained it ever since.

Prof Sharpe insisted that charitable donations were a better way of funding the unit than relying on an annual central government hand-out.

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"If you have public funding it's almost certain at some point to be reduced. So I prefer to be independent. You are not going to lose your autonomy and I think you get a better type of researcher," he said five years ago, before his retirement.

But the financial position of the PSBRU, now part of Bradford University's Skin Sciences Centre, has never been secure as it would have been if running costs derived from a capital sum accumulating interest in an appropriate charitable trust, for example.

Skin Sciences Centre director Des Tobin said: "We don't have the money to have two fellows at the moment. Each fellow is paid a salary of more than £30,000. They are full doctors on their way to becoming consultant plastic surgeons.

"They have to be very highly motivated to agree to take two or three years out of their clinical training route. If we didn't offer them a reasonable salary we wouldn't get them.

"We probably spend the best part of £100,000 a year on two fellows. At the moment finances are a little bit precarious. I have been in Bradford for 18 years and at any one time we have had about £200,000 in the kitty. We are substantially below that now. That's why we only have one fellow at the moment, a Malaysian Mr Jing Qin Tay.

"But if we hit our target of £300,000 that would be good for up to five years."

In 1995 the unit virtually ran out of money but was saved due to the T&A's Extra Time Appeal which raised £105,000.

In 2009 the unit had £250,000 in the bank. Royalties from patented inventions such as the Bradford Arm Sling, a support for patients with hand or arm burns, which brought in many thousands of pounds a year, kept bank funds topped up especially at times when interest rates were low - as they are now.

Other inventions included the use of a super glue for skin grafts instead of stapling, and a disposable wound retractor which enabled a surgeon to work unassisted on small wounds. This led to world-wide patent rights and a Prince of Wales Award for Innovation & Production in 1988.

The PSBRU is only one of 16 plastic surgery units in the country. It is managed by the University of Bradford. All monies that come into the PSBRU sit within a dedicated fund that can only be used to support plastic surgery and burns research projects.

"The University can't use donations to the unit for other work it does for corporations like Unilever," Prof Tobin added.

David Sharpe insisted on that when he set up the unit towards the end of 1985. He had £200,000 from Robert Maxwell and £100,000 from the Bradford Fire Disaster Appeal.

He said: "We lived off the interest of that for a remarkably long time; but in those days you got interest. We needed about £40,000 a year to pay for the research fellows. We also did operations one afternoon a week at the Westcliffe Medical Practice in Shipley."

He would not like to see a more reliable system of funding, a charitable trust for example.

"That would be ideal if enough money can be raised or somebody is prepared to put money into it. Up to now we have lived hand-to-mouth and keep asking the people of Bradford to help. But it's a precarious existence," he added.

Since David Sharpe retired at the end of 2013, the honorary director of the burns unit has been Ajay L Mahajan, consultant plastic surgeon at BRI. He said: "Research activities at the PSBRU look at various ways in which wound healing and scarring following wound healing can be improved.

"It is this research that provides for evidence-based medicine. Research lays down a strong foundation for our young doctors to pursue a career in plastic surgery and encourages them to embark on innovative projects.The University generously supports these students by waiving their tuition fees."