Fire and Rescue Services: Suicide Prevention Training

Luke Akehurst Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of suicide prevention training for fire and rescue services.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate and all the hon. Members from across the House who supported the application.

Today, I am backing the Samaritans’ “United with the frontline” campaign to call on the Government to ensure that every fire and rescue service in England has funded mandatory suicide prevention training for all its firefighters. I pay tribute to Samaritans, the UK and Ireland’s largest suicide prevention charity. Every 10 seconds, a Samaritans volunteer responds to a call for help. In 2025, that meant over 3.3 million calls. As well as the helpline, Samaritans works with people in community settings and prisons and provides training across different workplaces, including to fire services in England. Given its incredible service helping to save the lives of people at their most vulnerable, I believe that it is important that we, as policymakers, listen to the voice of Samaritans when deciding how we can best prevent lives being lost to suicide.

Samaritans tells me of a stark picture of the situation today. Last year, 5,728 deaths by suicide were registered in England and the suicide rate reached its highest level in over 20 years. Clearly, there is more that this place can do to support people in their hour of need and prevent the death by suicide of our constituents.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. In its briefing, Samaritans highlights not only the 3,200 suicide call-outs that fire crews attend, but the heavy toll on firefighters themselves, with over 60% reporting mental health struggles. Does he agree that mandatory training must work both ways: equipping crews to save lives in the community while building robust workplace support to protect its own staff?

[Luke Akehurst]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for her helpful intervention. I agree that this cuts both ways. It is both about the members of the public that the fire service intervenes with when they are in crisis and the mental health of firefighters themselves. I will come to that point later in my speech.

Fire and rescue services play a key role supporting vulnerable people every day. Their skills are often required in attending complex incidents, meaning that they often interact with the people in society most at risk of suicidal crisis. Increasingly, fire and rescue services are being called out to people in suicidal crisis. In the last decade, the number of call-outs to suicide incidents has sadly tripled. Despite firefighters being more and more expected to support people in crisis, there is no current mandatory in-depth suicide training offer for every firefighter in England. Such provision could train them to spot the signs of suicidality, compassionately open up non-judgmental conversations about suicide and make a safe intervention to stop a suicide.

Exposing the postcode lottery that this gap in provision leads to, Samaritans made freedom of information requests in June last year, which indicated the variation across the country. While eight fire and rescue services had some form of mandatory training relating to suicide prevention, a further 18 only had optional training, while eight more had no suicide prevention or related mental health training whatever. Most commonly, optional training consists of a short e-learning module focused on awareness raising, which, although valuable, is unlikely to equip a firefighter with the skills needed to save a life.

Thankfully, in County Durham, Samaritans found that we do have mandatory operational training on a person in crisis. However, the disparity in provision can be seen just across our one region in the north-east as Cleveland has a non-mandatory version of that training, while Northumberland does not provide any training of this kind. Clearly, a national standard is needed to support fire and rescue services to provide the training that their workers need to respond to complex crises.

It is not just members of the public who are left unsupported by these gaps in training. Firefighters have prolonged contact with their peers in the fire and rescue services who also may be struggling with their mental health, exacerbated by the pressure of their role and the trauma that they often witness. Some 51 deaths by suicide among firefighters were recorded between 2011 and 2018, and 21 suicides by non-senior fire service officers were recorded between 2020 and 2022. A survey found that over 60% of fire service staff and volunteers had experienced mental health problems linked to traumatic events at work. I hope the Minister will outline in his remarks what the Government are doing to ensure that fire and rescue services have the support they need in the workplace to undertake their work while living happy and fulfilled lives.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

Firefighters and fire crews see traumatic events on a regular basis. Sometimes, on busy days, they get very little time to decompress or debrief between events. There is an amazing guy in Hampshire called Spencer Wragg, a former police officer, who is trying to get a mental health support app put on every police work phone in the country so that the police can get the support when they need it. Does the hon. Gentleman think that something similar should be explored for firefighters?

[Luke Akehurst]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that useful intervention. If that idea is rolled out to the police, it ought also to be rolled out to other emergency responders.

In its first year of operation, the Fire Fighters Charity crisis line received more than 200 calls from firefighters in need of support. I pay tribute to that organisation’s work, providing online resources alongside that helpline. Individual fire and rescue services have also made strides to adopt and trial workplace support tools despite the lack of an overarching national framework.

Although forces have pioneered their own approaches, such as trauma risk management training and peer supporter systems to facilitate supportive conversations between colleagues, our fire and rescue services should not be left on their own when they are already under-resourced and be expected to work out the best mental health provision with no support or guidance from the top. Clearly, this industry needs bespoke mental health support for its workers. Firefighters put their lives on the line to keep us safe; the least we can do is provide them with the support they need for their mental wellbeing.

In discussing any expansion in the role of our fire and rescue services, the voice of firefighters must be front and centre. I urge the Government to engage constructively with the Fire Brigades Union, and I urge the Minister to set out the engagement of the Minister that he is standing in for today, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, with the union on this matter so far.

The evidence that this training can have a real impact is clear. Already, Samaritans and other providers deliver such training to workplaces that request it. The Samaritans’ training and engagement programme has proven that there is demand for workplace training on how to manage conversations about suicide, how to make a suicide intervention and how to manage the effects of a suicide within fire and rescue services. For example, Samaritans has worked with London Fire Brigade to provide such training to about 50 of their workers.

I pay tribute to the provisions on staff welfare that our local fire and rescue authority in County Durham and Darlington provide already. Those include counselling employer assistant programmes, signposting to local professional organisations that specialise in trauma support and utilising the Fire Fighters Charity crisis line, which all UK fire and rescue services subscribe to.

Let me come to the campaign’s asks of the Government and our asks of the Minister who is responding to the debate. Today, I want to back Samaritans’ call for a national approach to delivering suicide prevention training to fire and rescue services. Such a national approach will ensure that every force is equipped to support those in crisis and to save lives. In doing so, the Government would recognise that the support a person receives in a mental health crisis should not vary depending on where in the country they live or what operational decisions their fire and rescue authority has made with its limited resources. I urge the Minister to set out plans for this much-needed approach in his response.

I recognise and welcome steps that have already been taken to address these gaps, including a suicide prevention toolkit, published by the National Fire Chiefs Council, which I know Samaritans was successful in influencing. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has launched a public consultation on the creation of a new college of fire and rescue to better align training and national standards across England in order to improve the health and wellbeing of fire and rescue staff. That consultation presents an opportunity to embed suicide prevention training in the improved offer.

Standards should be developed by a working group of suicide prevention experts, with a focus on training that is in-depth, facilitator-led and, where possible, carried out in person. Such training should focus on developing practical skills to support people’s safety through conversations about suicidal thoughts, with the aim of building confidence in signposting people to the right support. Training must also build practical skills in safely managing suicide prevention for someone in crisis. I would appreciate the Minister updating the House on whether suicide prevention training is being looked at as part of that consultation, and on how he will ensure that suicide prevention experts and people with lived experience are at the heart of any proposals.

I am grateful for the support from other hon. Members for this crucial campaign. No one suffering from a severe mental health crisis should ever be left without the support they need. In countless cases our fire and rescue services step in and provide that support. They can often be the literal difference between life and death. We owe it to them, and to everyone in our country who suffers from mental illness or who is at risk of a mental health crisis, to provide the training needed to save lives and begin the road to recovery. I look forward to the Minister’s outlining what the Government are doing to ensure that every fire and rescue service worker receives the training that they need so that all our constituents know that if they or a loved one ever needs that emergency support, they will receive it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Akehurst]

I thank everyone who has participated in what I think has been a useful debate, during which we have had the time to delve into a serious and important subject in quite some detail.

The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) made the important point that the first responder on the scene is critical and that the training that they have received can save lives. He outlined the tragic case of his constituent’s daughter, and it was important for us to hear about what this issue means for the people who are directly affected by it.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) and the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), who have now left the Chamber, but who made important and useful interventions before they did so.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), made some very important points in support of the call by Samaritans for mandatory training, and very importantly she raised the issue of the support offered to firefighters compared with the support offered to the police.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), talked about the changing nature of call-outs and the increased number that involve an individual in crisis. He made a very important point about learning from what is effective in training programmes in other sectors rather than reinventing the wheel. He also made the important point about a proportionate approach to the time taken up in training and the costs involved, along with raising the important issue of the duty of care to the firefighters.

I thank the Minister for his very detailed response to the debate and for paying tribute to Samaritans as an organisation and our firefighters. It was important that he mentioned the control room staff. After a meeting last Friday, I had the honour of being taken into the control room for County Durham and Darlington by the chief fire officer. It was the height of the firework season and very busy, and I saw the calm way that those people dealt with dramatic phone calls coming in short order. I think of the impact that working in that way every day must have on them.

The Minister mentioned the importance of the National Fire Chiefs Council for looking at any gaps in training as a sector. He also mentioned not pre-empting the evidence that comes back along with the need for it to be sector-led. I accept that point and welcome that he did not rule out—if the evidence shows that it is needed—responding positively to the call for a national mandated requirement. I look forward to hearing what evidence comes back from that survey and whether the gaps identified from talking to the fire chiefs match those identified in the desktop survey that Samaritans did through freedom of information requests. I take the Minister’s points about learning from the police experience but not seeing it as mapping completely across. His points about the potential role of the college of fire and rescue were also important.

I end by echoing what the Minister said about not assuming that current provision is good enough. Certainly, the research by Samaritans suggested that there is considerable postcode variation even between the fire brigades within an individual region. I am reassured by what the Minister said about properly going away and looking at the evidence and seeing if what Samaritans has asked for is indeed what is needed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of suicide prevention training for fire and rescue services.