Lucy Macleod is a Senior Fire Officer with London Fire Brigade and Borough Commander for Hammersmith & Fulham.
With more than 17 years’ service, she has worked across operational command, technical rescue, national resilience and community risk, including serving as a Temporary Deputy Assistant Commissioner.
Search and rescue expertise
She is currently the only woman serving as a National Tactical Advisor for Urban Search and Rescue in the UK, providing specialist advice and support for complex technical rescue incidents and national resilience operations. Lucy has led and supported complex operational response and multi-agency resilience work at local, London and national level.
She was instrumental in the development and implementation of 10-Second Triage for major incidents, working across emergency service and national partners to translate a significant change in mass casualty response into operational practice. The project was subsequently recognised as Project of the Year at the 2025 Global Search & Rescue Awards.
Industry recognition
In 2025, Lucy was named Most Influential Woman in Fire at the Fire Excellence Awards, recognising her leadership, innovation and contribution to the fire and rescue sector.
In 2026, she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship for No One Left Behind, an international research project exploring how emergency services can improve the rescue and evacuation of bariatric people during major incidents.
Her research is taking her across Europe, the United States and Japan, with the ambition of informing future UK operational guidance and ensuring that nobody is left behind because existing rescue systems were not designed with them in mind.
Alongside her operational career, Lucy holds a number of voluntary leadership roles across the sector, including Assistant Director of UKRO, membership of the FireAid Steering Committee and serving on the Board of Directors for Women in Protective Services.
She is a Fellow of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management and was the first woman to be awarded Fellowship of the Institute of Search and Technical Rescue.
Book series and mental health support
Lucy is also a children’s author and creator of the Lucy & Blue series, inspired in part by her work with Blue, her trauma and wellbeing dog. Together, Lucy and Blue support conversations around mental health, trauma and wellbeing, and their work in this area has received award recognition.
The Lucy & Blue books were created with a wider purpose: to challenge outdated language, gender inequality and stereotypes within the emergency services. Through real responders, inclusive stories, practical safety messages and charitable partnerships, Lucy wants children to grow up seeing the emergency services as a place where everyone can belong, regardless of gender or background, and to inspire future generations to see possibilities for themselves that stereotypes might otherwise have closed off.
