The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP

Congratulations on becoming Prime Minister. At your conference in September you said that hope comes from honesty. We agree, and we write in that spirit on behalf of the people who keep the rest of the country safe.

Silence Between Sirens is a suicide-prevention cause for emergency services personnel across the United Kingdom. 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.

The cause is personal. In Hannah’s words:

“I spent 16 years in uniform saying ‘I’m fine’ when I wasn’t, carrying the weight of the job in silence. I now live with PTSD. In 2025, I came close to ending my life. Accessing psychiatric support eventually saved me - but the journey to survival showed me exactly where the gaps are.”

Richard served as a frontline response officer with the Metropolitan Police in Peckham, one of South London’s busiest boroughs. He knows from the inside what the job asks of people, and brings many years of senior leadership experience to the cause.

The people we are talking about

More than 200,000 people serve on the front line of our emergency services: around 170,000 police officers, 41,000 firefighters, tens of thousands of paramedics and ambulance crew, and more than 3,500 volunteer coastguard rescue officers, across all four nations. Add the call handlers, control rooms, police staff and volunteers who stand alongside them, and the number is well over 300,000. Behind each of them is a family.

What the job carries

Every shift brings exposure to what most people never see: the death of a child, a fatal collision, violence, a fire that could not be stopped in time. The harm rarely comes from a single incident. It builds - shift after shift, job after job - with little opportunity to process or recover before the next call. The greatest risk sits in the silence between those incidents, carried quietly between shifts and away from support.

That weight does not stay at work. It goes home to partners, children and parents, who carry it too, often without the language or the help to know what to do. Some people reach a point where suicide feels like the only way out. It is not. These deaths are preventable, and people do not go from fine to crisis overnight. There are moments along the way when someone can be reached.

What the evidence shows

When Mind surveyed more than 1,600 police, fire, ambulance and search and rescue staff and volunteers in 2016, 92% had experienced stress, low mood and poor mental health, and 62% a mental health problem. More than one in four (27%) had contemplated suicide. Nearly half (46%) said someone would be treated negatively if they disclosed a mental health problem. The silence is not a personal failing. It is a cultural expectation.

The Police Federation of England and Wales believes more than 100 police officers and staff died by suicide between 2022 and 2025, at least 70 of them serving officers. The Federation says its figures are likely to be a significant undercount, because forces were not required to record these deaths.

For fire, ambulance and coastguard personnel, we can find no published national figure.

The gap

There is no single national record of deaths by suicide among emergency services personnel. Chief constables agreed this spring to introduce mandatory recording for police. NHS trusts, including ambulance trusts, can take part in a voluntary national data collection on staff suicide. Fire and rescue services have no national requirement to record. Earlier this year, 14,723 people signed a parliamentary petition asking for mandatory recording across every service; the Government’s response in May recognised the variation but stopped short of requiring it.

The absence of data does not mean the absence of a problem. It means no one knows the true scale, and no one is clearly accountable for acting on it.

We recognise what is already in place: the agreement to introduce mandatory police recording, the £2.4 million announced in July to expand mental health support for police officers and staff in England and Wales, and NHS work on staff suicide. Each matters. Each is also partial. Support is arranged service by service and nation by nation, and most of it engages late, after harm has occurred. A police officer, a paramedic and a firefighter can attend the same incident and go home to three very different levels of support. As demand on every service grows, so does the load on the people inside them. Without action now, the gap widens.

What we are asking

We would value the chance to work with you and your Government on three things:

1. A meeting with you and your team, alongside the ministers responsible for each service, to set out what we are seeing on the ground and where support is missing.

2. A commitment to consistent, mandatory recording of suicides across every emergency service, developed with the devolved governments, so that the scale is finally known.

3. Agreement to develop a shared standard for early support - before breaking point - that applies whichever uniform someone wears, shaped with services, unions, charities and people with lived experience.

We are an early-stage cause, and we do not claim to have every answer. We bring lived experience, conversations already happening across services, and a clear view of where the gaps are. We want to work with government to close them.

You spoke of a Britain with hope again. That hope needs to reach the people who run towards danger on our behalf. We owe them that, and this is the moment to act. A conversation with you and your team would be a powerful first step, and we would welcome it at your earliest convenience.