THE ambulance service officer responsible for liaising with other agencies in a major incident could not make contact with police and did not try to call the fire service on the night of the Manchester Arena bombing, the public inquiry has heard.

Stephen Taylor, a North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) resilience manager and on-call tactical adviser, was asleep at home when he received a call from a colleague, Jonathan Butler.

The call, at 10.43pm on May 22 2017, was 12 minutes after suicide bomber Salman Abedi had detonated a device in the foyer of the arena, known as the City Room, killing 22 bystanders and injuring hundreds more.

The hearing heard that they agreed that while Mr Butler, also an NWAS tactical adviser, would head to the scene, Mr Taylor would stay at home and try to gain "situational awareness" to find out what had happened and what the current situation was.

In fact he was unable to get through to the force duty officer (FDO) at police HQ, whose line was swamped with calls, with the fire service also struggling to contact police in the minutes after the explosion, the inquiry heard.

Mr Taylor did not suggest to his own NWAS control room to make contact with police through another radio method, known as the "hailing channel", for more than half an hour, the hearing was told.

Mr Taylor was designated the national inter-agency liaison officer (NILO) for the incident, whose job it was to liaise with the other 999 services.

Nicholas de la Poer, counsel to the inquiry, said: "You were the person whose job it was to achieve that.

"Do you think 32 minutes is an acceptable period of time to have elapsed before you are making the suggestion to your control room?"

Mr Taylor said: "There was a lot of conversations in between but yes, I think we could have had a hailing channel earlier."

Mr De La Poer said his other role that night was as a tactical adviser.

He said: "Did you provide any tactical advice in the first hour?"

Mr Taylor replied: "I would say it's still very much information gathering."

The witness also conceded he did not try to call British Transport Police (BTP), despite the bombing being at the arena, which is on the Victoria railway station complex and policed by BTP.

Mr Taylor said: "I was not wholly sure where the incident was, obviously with no eyes on. I didn't think they were the key agency at the time."

Mr De La Poer continued: "Your job is to facilitate inter-agency co-operation. Did you make any attempt to contact the fire and rescue service?"

Mr Taylor said: "No, I think my expectation was that they would have responded."

The inquiry, sitting in Manchester, is looking at all the circumstances before, during and after the terror attack.

The hearing continues.