Droopy - SARH have to play the hand they are dealt - unless the Govt decide they want the capability to provide surge/concurrent ops then it won't happen. Equally, unless the military decide they want to maintain a bigger presence in SAR than 66 then that is what we will be stuck with.
Regardless of the manpower, the funding is still split between the home office and the MoD, with the MoD paying most (which seems rather outrageous) so nothing will come off the Defence budget anyway.
Max - as soon as you drop seconds, people will be posted to the SH force, everyone's manning is in tatters and their pull will be greater than ours.
If you only have one cab at each location then you would need just about all the SAR assets to give 8 aircraft and you wouldn't achieve that in less than 4 - 5 hours. With seconds you only need half the UK assets and olny from the nearest locations - a far better response that wouldn't denude the rest of the UK of SAR cover.
Surge and concurrency - the need won't go away as much as bean counters would like to think it will.