Firefighters have held a training exercise in Rotherham, testing their ability to respond to a large incident at an industrial premises in the town.

Dozens of firefighters took part in the ‘live’ training at Culina Ambient, Hellaby which was designed to test the plans that are in place to deal with an incident on the site.

South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue regularly carries out training exercises at commercial premises across the county, to rehearse how it would respond to an emergency on the sites, some of which are required by law to test their contingency plans.

Partners including Yorkshire Ambulance Service, South Yorkshire Police, Environment Agency, Rotherham Council and Public Health England also took part in the exercise, helping the fire service to test how effectively it works alongside other emergency services.

Station manager Dave Scully, said: “Exercises such as this are vitally important for two reasons. First, they give our crews excellent experience of dealing with, bringing realistic scenarios to life in real time. Second, they help both us and the business to test the procedures that we have in place to deal with a major emergency on their site.”

“How we work alongside our emergency service partners- known as interoperability- is another important aspect to training like this, as there is much we can continue to learn from one another about our ways of responding to incidents.”