London Fire Brigade has begun conducting training around how emergency services respond to terrorist incidents, on behalf of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the world’s largest defence alliance.
Twenty-one delegates from countries across North Africa and the Middle East took part in training with officers from the UK’s National Inter-Agency Liaison Officer (NILO) Network, which is managed by the Brigade.
The training aims to ensure that first responders, both civilian and military, can effectively work together when responding to acts of terror, as well as introduce basic coordination plans that can be used by emergency services. These plans can then be developed to suit the unique needs of each participating nation.
Officers from law enforcement, emergency services and military backgrounds attended the course. Delegates heard from the Brigade’s officers about how emergency services and public bodies in the UK coordinate their response to emergency situations. This included sharing the UK’s Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles (JESIP).
The course also covered how the Brigade and partners have responded to major incidents in recent years, such as the London Bridge attack in 2017 and the 2018 Salisbury Poisonings. The training culminated in a tabletop exercise for delegates where they were able to put everything they had learned into practice, with a tactical exercise designed to test their response to a potential major incident.
The NILO Network started in 2001, when officers from the Brigade began looking at how to respond to an act of terror. For over two decades the Brigade has continued to develop its expertise in this area, initially working to improve capabilities across the UK.
The partnership with NATO grew out of the Brigade’s involvement in the Counter Terrorism Preparedness Network (CTPN), which brings together the mayors and counter terrorism leads of major European cities. In these meetings it became clear that the Brigade’s expertise could be used to train NATO partners. As a result, the programme has been created, with additional support from the US State Department, with the aim of helping first responders increase public safety globally.
Assistant Commissioner Patrick Goulbourne, NILO National Co-ordinator, said: “Whenever an act of terror occurs, the effects can be felt around the world. In response to this risk, the Brigade is using its expertise to ensure first responders in different nations are equipped to respond in the worst-case scenarios.
“Partnering with NATO and the US State Department, brings our collective expertise together to reduce risk, improve interoperability, and to protect communities wherever they happen to be. It also gives us the chance to learn from partners on how we can improve our service to London and Londoners.”
Gabriele Cascone, Head of Counter Terrorism, said: “Inter-agency cooperation is a fundamental and key element in the fight against terrorism and in NATO’s work in this domain.
“The NATO Counterterrorism Interagency Coordination training introduces, and initiates assistance-eligible NATO partners the UK National Interagency Liaison Officer (NILO) as an inter-agency co-ordination model for responding to terrorist attacks.
“With this introduction to the NILO approach, we expect participants will learn how to best respond to terrorist incidents and improve the co-ordination of information, intelligence, and capabilities to facilitate an effective, multi-agency response.”
The Brigade’s work is part of NATO’s wider work in the region. NATO’s Counter-Terrorism Section is also developing and conducting counterterrorism courses for assistance-eligible NATO partner countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Gulf, and Sahel regions thanks to the financial support provided by the United States to the NATO National Contributory Fund. This programme encompasses both civilian law enforcement/criminal justice agencies as well as armed forces, defence, and security officials with a view toward strengthening overall civil-military cooperation and information sharing on counterterrorism efforts through a holistic, whole-of-government approach, in counter-terrorism areas of work such as: Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear defence, battlefield evidence, countering terrorism financing, border security and response to terrorist incidents.