The Rt Hon the Lord Khan of Tooting

Silence Between Sirens is a suicide-prevention cause for people who serve on the front line of the UK’s emergency services. Our goal is simple: no one in the emergency services should die by suicide. We exist to make it safe to speak up early, so that no one reaches breaking point alone.

We are writing to you because London can lead the country on this. Your office oversees the Metropolitan Police through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and oversees London Fire Brigade. We have also written to the leaders of the Met, the City of London Police, British Transport Police, London Fire Brigade and the London Ambulance Service, and to the Prime Minister.

Hannah Cooper founded the cause after 16 years in uniform. Richard Goold served as a frontline response officer with the Metropolitan Police in Peckham, South London. We both know from the inside what the job asks of people.

The cause is growing quickly. More than 12,000 frontline emergency services workers engage regularly with our content across our social channels. This summer we trained 44 blue light workers in Mental Health First Aid and suicide prevention, and supported 40 officers after the loss of a colleague.

What the job carries

Around 170,000 police officers and 41,000 firefighters serve across the UK. When Mind surveyed more than 1,600 police, fire, ambulance and search and rescue staff and volunteers in England and Wales in 2016, 92% had experienced stress, low mood and poor mental health while working for the emergency services, and more than one in four (27%) had contemplated suicide.

The harm rarely comes from a single incident. It builds, shift after shift, carried quietly in the silence between incidents and taken home to families. Some people reach a point where suicide feels like the only way out. It is not. These deaths are preventable, and there are moments along the way when someone can be reached.

The gap

Deaths by suicide among emergency services personnel are not consistently recorded anywhere in the UK. Policing agreed mandatory recording in April 2026, but no national figure has been published. NHS staff data collection is not mandatory, and there is no fire service collection. Support is arranged service by service, and much of it engages late, after harm has been done. A police officer, a paramedic and a firefighter can attend the same incident in London and go home to three very different levels of support.

What we are offering

We have developed Before Breaking Point, a two-hour early-support session for recruits and new starters during initial training, which we are offering to London’s services at no cost, with a return visit between six and twelve months later. The evidence for starting early is promising. In a UK trial of 570 student paramedics, resilience training before frontline work cut the odds of PTSD or major depression a year later by 75 to 80%. It is a single trial, but it points in one direction. Learning also fades without a refresher. In an independent evaluation for Mind (2018), the share of recruits who said they understood ways to build resilience rose from 48% to 93% after training, then fell to 71% two to four months later.

What we are asking

1. A meeting with you, or with the members of your team who lead on policing and fire, to set out what we are seeing on the ground and where support is missing.

2. Your support to bring London’s emergency services together on a shared standard for early support and for welfare during investigations, so that support no longer depends on which uniform someone wears.

3. London to lead on recording, with the Met and London Fire Brigade recording every death by suicide of serving staff and publishing what they learn, and your voice behind consistent recording across every emergency service.

We do not claim to have every answer. We do bring lived experience, a growing community across every service and materials ready to share. Londoners rely on these people every day. We owe them support long before crisis. We would welcome the chance to meet at your earliest convenience.