In a bid to equip their frontline staff for any situation, Barking and Dagenham Council have trained several officers in bleed first aid training on how to treat a stab wound.

The training was delivered by Street Doctors and officers from the council’s Trading Standards team, Community Safety, Environment Enforcement, Licensing, Antisocial Behaviour and Food Safety staff took part.

The council is holding a further training day in December for staff as well as put in place plans to roll the session out to at least 200 year 12 students in local schools.

Councillor Syed Ghani, Cabinet Member for Enforcement and Community Safety said: “Across London there is an issue with youth violence and knife crime, so it is important that we all do our bit to help reduce it.

“The training will now provide our frontline officers the skills to hopefully save a life on the rare occasion where we see a knife attack in the borough.”

Following on from the training sessions, the council also plans to install bleed kits and cabinets in all 11 Community Hubs around the borough as well as providing mobile bleed kits to frontline staff.

Residents can also attend a knife wound first aid training workshop at Dagenham Library on Tuesday 5 December from 5pm to 7pm. For more information, residents can email lisaappleton@lifelineprojects.co.uk