Mr. Graham Ellis
Graham Ellis has been the delivery lead for the UK Homeland Security Group National Counter Terrorism Exercise Team since 2020, following a lengthy career in the Fire & Rescue Service.
Mr. Ellis joined London Fire Brigade (LFB) in 1983, ending his 37-year career in 2020 as Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for Special Operations and Major Incident planning, training, response and recovery.
Mr. Ellis spearheaded Incident Command training programmes for LFB before moving into Special Operations Group to play a key role in the preparations for dealing with high threat challenges and terrorist incidents, and later headed London and the UK’s National Inter Agency Liaison Officer (NILO) cadres.
Along with a small team, Mr. Ellis worked with partners from Police, Health, Military and UK Government to shape London and the UK’s response models for addressing an asymmetric terrorist threat, and also played a key role in representing LFB and the UK Fire Service in the National Olympic Co-ordination Centre (NOCC) during the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. This command centre was pivotal in ensuring the delivery of a safe, secure and successful Olympics.
As LFB Assistant Commissioner Mr. Ellis headed the Special Operations Group and London Resilience Team, responsible for the preparations, training, response and recovery to a range of natural and terrorist related threats, and for overseeing fire service operations across the Greater London area.
Mr. Ellis undertook the Gold Commander role for LFB during several no-notice terror attacks on London in 2017, co-ordinating the response of specialist teams.
Mr. Ellis’s current role sees him co-ordinating a small team of emergency services secondees into Homeland Security Group, delivering a national programme to test and exercise the effective response to, and recovery from, a range of high threat challenges. The programme involves engagement with emergency services command /control room staff, as well as operational, tactical and strategic commanders, linking into cross government crisis response arrangements.
