A marine training exercise has taken place in Dorset to ensure teams from across the UK can respond to challenging threats and incidents at sea.

The exercise off the coast of Portland was led by the Joint Maritime Security Centre and involved officers from Dorset Police Marine Team and Portland Port Police, along with colleagues from Hampshire, Thames Valley, Avon & Somerset, the Met and Essex.

Other agencies involved in the three-day exercise included the RNLI, HM Coastguard, UK Border Force, the NCA, Ministry of Defence, Marine Management, Hazardous Area Response Team (HART), the NPAS helicopter and the fire service.

The training exercise included a series of scenarios based on protests both in the water and on a vessel to enable agencies to work together to safely deal with the incident.

Superintendent Chris Naughton, of the Operations department, said: “Multi-agency exercises such as this are critical in ensuring that we work alongside colleagues to ensure we have all the skills we need to tackle any threat on our waters so we can protect the public and our marine community.”

Chris Chant, director of the Joint Maritime Security Centre, which is the government’s coordination organisation for maritime security, said: “Our role is to help agencies to understand and work together to respond to complex security threats at sea.

“This exercise was held at Portland Port to test tactical responses to a series of difficult challenges and incidents at sea and on vessels and gave those agencies taking part the opportunity to think about how they would respond tactically to threats and incidents.

“It is important that partners work together to practice and plan for incidents like this because working at sea is particularly challenging, the risks are wide and the threat can be significant.”

Dorset Police’s Marine Policing Team has a responsibility for policing the force’s 89 miles of coastline out to the territorial limit of 12 miles. This includes the busy Weymouth and Christchurch Harbours and small fishing ports of West Bay, Lyme Regis and Swanage, as well as the world’s second largest natural harbour at Poole.