Manchester Arena Inquiry told police failed in response to bombing

Police "failed" in their response to the Manchester Arena attack, terrorism experts have told the bombing inquiry.

Three experts told the Manchester Arena Inquiry there had been a "significant failure" in Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) emergency response to the attack, which killed 22 people on 22 May 2017.

Scott Wilson, Ian Dickinson and Iain Sirrell said GMP failed to work well with other services in the aftermath.

They said there was no evidence of a "cohesive and co-ordinated response".

The hearing was told the men looked through close to 1,000 pages of evidence about the police response to the attack.

The inquiry heard there was "a breakdown in communication between the different commands, resulting in a lack of direct command and operational confusion" and the failed GMP response extended to the other emergency services involved.

A "major failure" of the co-ordinated response was emergency service commanders not meeting together at the scene at an early stage.

Mr Wilson, a former counter-terrorism commander at Metropolitan Police, said the "people who should have been speaking to each other weren't speaking to each other".

He said that although there was some joint working between GMP, British Transport Police and the ambulance service within the arena foyer, the co-ordinated response by emergency services overall "didn't work at all" and it was a "significant omission" by GMP not to declare a major incident until two and a half hours after the explosion.

Mr Dickinson, a former counter-terrorism chief in Scotland, said a declaration should have been made within 10 minutes and that would have made a difference to the response.

He said another "significant" fault was the force's failure not to learn lessons from an earlier counter-terrorism training exercise, known as Winchester Accord, at the Trafford Centre in May 2016.

The hearing was told the exercise revealed a serious lack of multi-agency co-operation which was repeated in the arena response.

The inquiry continues.

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