Kerslake Review: 'Strategic oversights' kept fire service away from Manchester Arena bomb scene
The major report details lessons that can be learned from the Arena attack.
Last updated 27th Mar 2018
A major report has found that the fire service was "outside of the loop'' of the police and ambulance emergency response to the terror attack at Manchester Arena, leading to a two-hour delay.
Firefighters, some who heard the bomb go off, and are trained in first-aid and terror scenarios, did not get permission to go to the scene until hours after the suicide bombing, despite the nearest station being half a mile away.
"Strategic oversights'' by police commanders led to confusion with other 999 services over whether an "active shooter'' was on the loose and poor communications between Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) meant the "valuable'' assistance of fire crews was delayed by two hours and six minutes after the bombing, which left 22 dead and scores injured.
The 226-page report by Lord Bob Kerslake, was commissioned by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, to assess the preparedness and emergency response to the attack on last year.
No individuals are named but the report makes 50 recommendations.
The panel of experts state they are not able to say whether earlier arrival of the fire service would have "affected any casualty's survivability''.
"This is a question that only the coronial inquests can decide,'' the report said.
But it says fire fighters "would have been much better placed to support and, potentially, to accelerate the evacuation of casualties from the foyer,'' if they had gone to the scene.
The suicide bomber detonated a home-made device at 10.31pm on May 22, last year, in the foyer of Manchester Arena as 14,000 people streamed out at the end of an Ariana Grande concert.
Officers from British Transport Police were on scene one minute later and declared a major incident by 10.39pm.
The police duty inspector in the Greater Manchester Police control room declared Operation Plato, a pre-arranged plan when it is suspected a marauding armed terrorist may be on the loose - and assumed, wrongly, other agencies were aware.
But he was praised for taking one of the most crucial "life or death'' decisions of the night, a "key use of discretion'' to over-ride the rules and allow paramedics and police already on scene to continue treating the injured even though they may be in danger of further attacks.
GMFRS and the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) were only informed an hour and a half later, and by then Operation Plato was effectively put on "stand by'' as it emerged the attack was from a single suicide bomber and not the prelude to further armed attacks.
Armed police and twelve ambulances were on the scene within 20 minutes but there was a shortage of stretchers to ferry the injured from the foyer to a casualty area on the concourse of Manchester Victoria Station, under the arena.
The report says it hopes a scenario of different services control rooms not being able to properly pass critical information between them, "will never happen again''.
The behaviour of some media has also been criticised in Lord Kerslake's report.
The child of one family was given condolences on the doorstep by a journalist before official notification of the death of her mother and, in another incident, a note was put in a biscuit tin and sent into a hospital ward offering £2,000 for information, the report states.
Journalists also allegedly impersonated a bereavement nurse and a police officer, to get information, it was claimed.
The report said: "The panel was shocked and dismayed by the accounts of the families of their experience with some of the media.
"To have experienced such intrusive and overbearing behaviour at a time of enormous vulnerability seemed to us to be completely unacceptable.
"We were concerned to identify what might be done to prevent this happening again in any future terrorist event.''
The report said people talked about feeling "hounded'' and "bombarded'' as news crews from across the UK and around the world descended on Manchester.
The report states that it isn't possible to say for certain who the individuals were working for - so the report does not identify individual newspapers or broadcasters.
The report recommends that the media regulator - the Independent Press Standards Organisation - takes action on the "completely unacceptable'' behaviour by reviewing its code of conduct