SUCCESSFUL joint working between emergency services was made "impossible" by communication problems following the Manchester Arena blast, an inquiry has heard.

British Transport Police (BTP) control room staff had no direct line with their counterparts at Greater Manchester Police (GMP), as well as local ambulance and fire services, and had to call 999 and wait in the queue with the public, the inquiry heard.

Inspector Ben Dawson, force incident manager on the night for BTP, could not speak with GMP's force duty officer who the inquiry has heard was "overwhelmed" with the volume of tasks he faced.

BTP officers were at the scene when suicide bomber Salman Abedi struck on the evening of May 22 2017 as they patrolled around the venue - next to Victoria train station - on railway-owned land.

Mr Dawson took on the role of tactical commander from its London control room and said he assumed he was "running the incident" because of his lack of contact with a GMP commander.

He said he considered it was his force's responsibility to set up a rendezvous point for the emergency services.

He said: "I regarded us as having the best information at that point. We had already got officers on scene. Everybody else was really getting their information from us."

A BTP constable nominated a car park, near to the Arena, as a suitable location more than 10 minutes after the blast but amid the communication difficulties the ambulance service chose a different one near the venue and the fire service later settled on one some three miles away.

The car park rendezvous point (RVP) was abandoned nearly 30 minutes later when no-one turned up, the inquiry sitting in Manchester heard.

Nicholas de la Poer QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked: "I suppose one potential problem with BTP nominating a RVP early is if they don't communicate that another emergency service may nominate a different RVP and the result could be everybody goes to different places?"

Mr Dawson said: "Absolutely, it's me getting the chance to speak to someone on the ground to discuss what they think is the best RVP and then speaking to GMP or the ambulance service/fire service.

"It's the shared situational awareness and all the Jesip (Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme) principles that need to be put in here made harder by our limitations on communications really."

Inquiry chair Sir John Saunders said: "I think, I might go further, made impossible by the limitations in communications actually?

"Yes sir," said Mr Dawson.

The witness said the first hour of the incident was "absolute chaos".

He said: "You start with complete chaos and try to whittle it down."

Sir John asked: "Does it have to be chaos? Can it be organised in such a way that it won't be chaos or in reality will it always be chaos because it's such an appalling incident?"

Mr Dawson said: "My experience of pretty much any significant incident is it's always chaos.

"I think unfortunately it's always going to be chaos and it's the art of turning chaos into an organised response. That's what we are paid for, that's what we are trained for, but it's very very difficult."

He added: "In terms of working together it was not cohesive. We were not working together as well as we could have done but I'm not sure how easy that is, certainly within the first 45 minutes to an hour of the incident, this is managed chaos that we are dealing with."

Mr Dawson did not receive a call back from GMP's force duty officer or indeed from anyone at GMP before he clocked off, the hearing was told.

The inquiry into the blast which killed 22 people and injured hundreds of others will continue next Monday.