A CHANGE in the way paramedics treat victims of gun shootings has been requested by the coroner in charge of the inquest of gunman Derrick Bird and the 12 people he shot dead.

Coroner for north and west Cumbria David Roberts is to write to Home Secretary Theresa May and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley with a recommendation that ambulance staff be allowed quicker access to the scene of a shooting.

Currently, it is policy for ambulance staff to wait for the all-clear from the police to attend to a victim, or to be accompanied by an armed officer. And while in the Bird case nothing could have been done to save the lives of those who died, Mr Roberts said that giving emergency medical assistance to a shot person could make the difference between life and death.

“It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to see a situation where, if this was replicated, injuries might be serious enough for immediate paramedic assistance,” said Mr Roberts.

Speaking after the inquest Derek Cartwright, director of emergency services at North West Ambulance Service, said: “We accept, as often happens in tragic cases such as this, there are lessons to be learned, albeit on a national level. We need to reflect on the helpful comments made during this inquest.”

In his letter Mr Roberts will also highlight that the police airwaves system was operating at 97 per cent capacity on the day of the shootings. Mr Roberts said that the possibility of the radio system crashing was an area of national concern.

Cumbria police Chief Constable Craig Mackey said: “This was an incident of unprecedented scale so to not have learned lessons from it would be wrong.

“To hear the coroner sum up and go through that level of detail about what happened, and the horror of it, you wouldn’t be human if that didn’t have an impact on you. For some, lives will never be the same and I know that, as a constabulary, we will never forget.”

Mr Mackey added that he was impressed with the bravery of his police officers on the day and the families after the shootings.

In a separate, independent report into Cumbria Police’s response to the shootings, Assistant Chief Constable Simon Chesterman of West Mercia Police made nine recommendations to Cumbria Constabulary.

One of these referred to the glossary of terms used by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), which supplied armed officers from Sellafield to help search for Bird. The report said that the wording of tactics to stop Bird had a different meaning to CNC than it did to Cumbria Police. This could have led to confusion if CNC and police officers had been deployed together, said the Chesterman report.

Assistant Chief Constable Jerry Graham, who was in charge of stopping Bird on the day, said that many of the recommendations had already been implemented.

He said a better call sign system had been put in place to help clarify whether officers contacted were armed or not.

An 11-person inquest jury returned 12 majority verdicts of unlawful killing for David Bird, Kevin Commons, Darren Rewcastle, Susan Hughes, Kenneth Fishburn, Isaac Dixon, Jennifer and James Jackson, Garry Purdham, James Clark, Mike Pike and Jane Robinson. A verdict of suicide was returned for Derrick Bird.

The independent review into Cumbria Constabulary’s response to the shootings is now available for the public to look at online. Visit www.cumbria.police.uk