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A senior fire officer was communicating with his service headquarters from a conference in Cancun, Mexico, on the night of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, it has emerged.

Paul Argyle, the deputy chief fire officer, was responsible for encouraging all the emergency services to work efficiently together, a process that broke down on the night.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service did not attend the scene of the Salman Abedi suicide bombing until an hour after the last casualties had been removed because they believed there was an ongoing terrorist incident.

They could not get through to the force duty officer for Greater Manchester Police, who was in charge of the operation, and a joint meeting was only organised six hours after the attack, the inquiry was told.

Mr Argyle was on leave but attending a conference at the beach resort and only found out about the attack from social media or WhatsApp, he told a hearing.

The conference was organised by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and ran from 22 May, the day of the bombing, to 26 May.

The inquiry was told that Mr Argyle was asked to cut short his trip to return to deal with the aftermath of the attack in Manchester.

Sir John Saunders, chairman of the inquiry, said it was a "nice place for a conference" and Mr Argyle replied: "It was a global summit, sir."

The conference was finishing for the day and he lost wi-fi connection as he was taken back to his hotel by bus, so it was 00.57am, nearly an hour and a half after the bomb went off, before he suggested setting up a Strategic Co-ordination Group (SCG).

He received a message back from chief fire officer Peter O'Reilly at 1.26am to say an SCG had been arranged for 2.30am, and replied with a list of people he thought should attend.

However the meeting between senior police, ambulance and fire brigades commanders did not actually take place until 4.15am, nearly six hours after the attack.

Mr Argyle was chairman of an organisation called the Greater Manchester Resilience Forum (GMRF), that was supposed to bring the emergency services together.

One of the roles of the forum was to encourage the services to "co-ordinate together in the event of an emergency or other event, in the likelihood that it would produce a better outcome", Paul Greaney QC, for the inquiry, said.

That was supposed to be done through an SCG held at police headquarters, as "early as possible", Mr Argyle told the inquiry.

He said the aim should be to set one up within two hours, but Sir John Saunders said: "Rather a lot had happened in an incident like this, would it not be feasible to do it more quickly?"

Mr Argyle said: "Time can pass quickly in an event, or an incident, there may be less value in holding an SCG if they are not briefed, what they have to do is to add value."

The inquiry also heard that GMRF learned no lessons about a breakdown of communication between police and fire brigade during a counter-terrorism training exercise a year before the attack, Mr Argyle admitted.

Exercise Winchester Accord was a "live" exercise that took place on the night of 9 May 2016 at the Trafford shopping centre.

The exercise specifically involved setting up a SCG at the request of the resilience forum but lessons about the breakdown of communication were not passed back.

The inquiry continues.