Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to provide additional training for the emergency services to respond to fires following the Grenfell Tower fire.

Training is a pivotal part of any emergency service role. In the case of fire, it is the responsibility of individual fire and rescue authorities to ensure that continuous training is in place to maintain professional competency and to meet operational requirements including responding to major events such as the Grenfell Tower fire.

The Government is funding the Joint Emergency Interoperability Service Programme (JESIP). Part of its work has included the largest and most successful joint training initiative across the emergency services. It has also introduced a new national system for joint organisational learning to assist in improving the way in which the emergency services identify learning from incidents and exercises, and implement positive change to front line services.

The College of Policing sets the standards of professional practice and training for policing and also run the Multi Agency Gold Incident Command course which is open to leaders from different sectors including fire and local authorities.