Cabinet Office – Written evidence (NLR0126)

Summary

1. The Government’s first responsibility is to keep the country safe. Accordingly, domestic resilience is a fundamental element of our National Security Strategy, which sets out that the risks the UK faces are volatile, varied and connected. The Resilience Action Plan, published July 2025, sets out the UK Government’s strategic approach to how it will strengthen our domestic resilience.
   Responsibility for the overarching resilience system and the identification of major risks is led by the COBR Directorate in the Cabinet Office’s National Security Secretariat (NSS).  It leads work on cross-cutting and high priority risks, and in scenarios with major impacts uses the COBR mechanism to manage the Government’s response to major crises or events.
2. The UK’s system for identifying, preparing for, responding to and recovering from risks is complex and comprehensive, comprising risk assessment and prevention; essential services and critical national infrastructure; local resilience; training, skills and standards; public engagement and biosecurity risks.
3. The foundation of this approach is the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA), the UK government’s principal tool to identify and assess the most serious risks facing the UK. Under the Lead Government Department (LGD) model, each NSRA risk is owned by an LGD to ensure that those with the most relevant expertise, relationships and levers are responsible for planning, response and recovery arrangements. The publicly available National Risk Register (NRR) also contains information for risk practitioners and other organisations to inform their resilience planning.
4. The government also regularly assesses its capabilities and how prepared we are to assess risks through assurance, which includes scrutiny of response capabilities through the regular National Capabilities Assessment; a new dedicated red teaming capability; and independent expert advisory panels on whole-system risks.
5. To enhance our readiness for the highest impact of whole-of-system crises, called catastrophic risks, the Government has explicitly embedded the leadership role of the Cabinet Office in our central crisis management doctrine, the Amber Book, and strengthened governance with LGDs. The Cabinet Office has also established specific functions within the COBR directorate in respect of two groups of catastrophic risks - biological security and home defence - as part of which it has published the Biological Security Strategy (2023) and established the Home Defence Programme.
6. The Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 establishes a single framework for Civil Protection in the UK, including roles and responsibilities for Local Responder  and emergency powers. The UK Government’s Amber Book also provides a framework for how the UK central government collectively responds to crises that require co-ordinated action across government.
7. The Government utilises a range of tools as part of emergency response. This includes the National Situation Centre, established in 2021, which provides situational awareness for crisis response by bringing together data, analysis and critical expertise; and the Emergency Alerts system which was launched in 2023 to as an essential capability to warn and inform the public during emergencies. The Government also regularly reviews lessons and best practices from previous crises and other examples to drive continuous improvement in these capabilities,  complemented by the Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance (2024) and publicly available Lessons Digest.
8. Providing excellent training, exercising and appropriate governance to ensure that individual sectors are able to work together in crises is an essential part of our national resilience. To address this, the Government established the UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) in April 2025 to build the skills needed across the whole of society, and the Crisis Management Excellence Programme (CMEP) in 2023 to train civil servants. The new National Exercising Programme (NEP) also commits to testing our ability to respond to a range of risks through annual national ‘Tier 1’ exercises, which most recently tested our pandemic preparedness.
9. Risks and emergencies do not respect borders, and it is therefore vital that the Government works in partnership with both the devolved governments and the local tier. The Government has established a Four Nation Ministerial Group which will meet regularly to discuss and align resilience matters, and is also committed to enhancing our work with civil society, including through a recent public consultation on an enhanced statutory duty and initiatives such as the Local Resilience Forum Trailblazers programme.
10. Making the UK more resilient relies on the actions of many groups both inside and outside of government, and requires a fundamental shift in the way emergency preparedness is thought about. To drive this, the Government is committed to raising public awareness and understanding about emergency preparedness through public communications activity on risk and resilience, drawing on the results from the UK Public Survey of Risk perception, Resilience and Preparedness and international examples. It also provides guidance on actions recommended for individuals, households and communities through the GOV.UK/Prepare website.
11. The Resilience Action Plan sets out a broad range of activity that the Government will deliver over the course of this Parliament to strengthen the UK’s national resilience, including future plans to develop a common methodology to measure overall national resilience. The Government will continue to provide regular updates on progress made to strengthen our resilience in an annual statement to Parliament.

UK Government Approach to Resilience

1. The Government’s first responsibility is to keep the country safe. Accordingly, domestic resilience is a fundamental element of our National Security Strategy, which sets out that the risks that the UK faces are volatile, varied and interconnected.
2. In July 2025, the UK Government published its Resilience Action Plan, setting out our strategic approach to how we will strengthen our domestic resilience and invest to protect the nation.
3. The Action Plan articulates an ‘all hazards approach’ to build resilience across the increasingly volatile and varied risks we face. It is delivering against three objectives in this Parliament to: continuously assess how resilient the UK is to target interventions and resources effectively, enable the whole of society to take action to increase their resilience and strengthen the core public sector resilience system.
4. The UK Government defines resilience as the ability to anticipate, assess, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from shocks. The resilience landscape is extensive. It encompasses natural hazards, deliberate attacks, geopolitical instability, disease outbreaks, and other disruptive events, civil emergencies or threats to our way of life.
5. The UK’s system for identifying, preparing for, responding to and recovering from these risks is similarly complex and comprehensive. At its broadest, it comprises strategies to prevent long term risks manifesting; the foundational resilience of public services; a complex landscape of Critical National Infrastructure and essential services; community cohesion and local investment in utilities and infrastructure; skills, training and education; legislation, regulation and standards; engagement with the public and specific capabilities or countermeasures to Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) or similar hazards.

A central component of England’s resilience architecture is the network of Local Resilience Forums (LRFs). LRFs are place‑based partnerships that bring together local public services, including emergency services, local authorities, health bodies and other responders, to assess risk, plan collectively, build capability and respond to local emergencies. They provide the primary mechanism through which national risk assessments, guidance and expectations are translated into local preparedness, response and recovery arrangements, reflecting local geography and community need.

6. Consequently, the Government applies a number of processes to enable targeting of resources and interventions across this complex landscape. The foundation of this approach is the National Security Risk Assessment, which has been developed over the past 20 years as the principal tool to identify and assess the most serious acute risks facing the UK over a 2-5 year time horizon. The purpose of the NSRA is to inform preparedness for these risks across Government and wider society. The NSRA is an internal, classified document, with a public version regularly updated and shared as the National Risk Register (NRR).
7. The NSRA does not aim to capture every risk that the UK could face. Instead it aims to identify a range of risks that are representative of the risk landscape and can serve as a cause-agnostic basis for planning for the common consequences of risks.
8. The NSRA assesses the likelihood and impact for each risk, following a rigorous and well-tested methodology. Risks are identified for inclusion in the NSRA by consulting a wide range of experts from across UK Government departments, the devolved governments, the government scientific community and outside of government (for example, in partner agencies, academic institutions and industry).
9. In 2021, the Government commissioned the Royal Academy of Engineering to undertake an external review of the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA)  As a result of this review, most significantly, the NSRA has moved to a dynamic assessment process, with risks updated in response to changes to the risk landscape or new evidence. The government also published the most transparent public-facing version of the NSRA, the National Risk Register (NRR), in August 2023. The NRR provided more information from the NSRA than ever before, containing information for risk practitioners, academics, and private and voluntary sector organisations who might benefit from this information but who do not have access to the classified NSRA. This information provided by the government enables them to assess how the risks might affect their organisations and interests, and to carry out resilience planning. We issued a further update of the NRR in January 2025.
10. Risks in the NSRA and NRR are assessed as ‘reasonable worst-case scenarios’. These scenarios represent the worst plausible manifestation of that particular risk (once highly unlikely variations have been discounted) to enable proportionate planning. The scenarios for each risk are produced in consultation with experts and data is collected from a wide range of sources.
11. Risks are reassessed as often as necessary, based on new evidence or lessons from real-world experience. ‘Groupthink’ and conventional wisdom are challenged through the refreshed Expert Advisory Programme. This challenge function is provided by eight standing advisory panels of academic, technical and scientific experts, each led by an independent chairperson.
12. Each NSRA risk is owned by a Lead Government Department (LGD), ensuring that those with the most relevant expertise, relationships and levers are responsible for putting the necessary planning, response and recovery arrangements into place for each risk area. The Government has published an overview of the responsibilities of Lead Government Departments, Devolved Governments and other Public Bodies[1]. This year, the Government intends to publish a refreshed expectations set for Lead Government Departments.
13. However, we cannot know how all risks will unfold, and across all NSRA risks we need some common systems and tools to respond. For this reason, the UK government also works to improve the general resilience of the nation to all risks - the ‘all hazards’ approach.
14. In July 2025, for the first time the Government published the Chronic Risks Analysis[2]. The UK is contending with a range of chronic risks. These are longer-term challenges that erode our economy, community, way of life and/or national security. They can also increase the likelihood and impact of acute risks — those events severe enough to require an emergency response from the UK civil contingencies system.
15. Understanding our capabilities and how prepared we are to assess risks is core to understanding our resilience. The government achieves this through assurance, aligned with the Orange Book, the UK Government’s handbook for the management of risk. This follows the industry standard model for assurance, comprising three tiers that incorporate self-assurance, assurance by system leaders and then internal auditing. A key feature of this is scrutiny of response capabilities across the UK government, which the Cabinet Office conducts through the regular National Capabilities Assessment.
16. The UK government’s LGD model, and scrutiny of response capabilities across government through the National Capabilities Assessment, addresses the first two tiers of this assurance model and begins to address the third. The government is also going further to bolster the third tier ‘red teaming’ by building a dedicated capability within the Government Office for Science, which will red team the next National Capabilities Assessment and offer a red teaming tool to test planning for specific risks. MHCLG is also implementing a sector‑led peer review programme for Local Resilience Forums (LRFs), which provides structured external challenge to partnership‑level preparedness, response and recovery, supporting greater confidence, consistency and learning across the system.
17. The Government has already taken steps to enhance our readiness for the highest impact whole-of-system crises, called catastrophic risks. We have explicitly embedded the leadership role of the Cabinet Office in our central crisis management doctrine, the Amber Book[3]; strengthened governance with LGDs to drive forward progress on risk planning; clearly set out indicative thresholds for when the Cabinet Office will lead the response in catastrophic emergencies in planning documents; and ensured a true whole-of-government response by mapping key cascading impacts of catastrophic risks.
18. As recommended by the Covid 19 Inquiry Module 1 Report, the Government remains committed to enhancing independent scrutiny of its resilience and preparedness for complex, whole-system risks, utilising external expertise to review evidence, challenge plans and mitigate groupthink.
19. A pilot of the process was successfully delivered in December 2025. The process involved a range of experts from outside government conducting a review, and providing recommendations and a report.
20. The UK government will reflect on lessons identified to inform the programme of expert panels covering whole-system risks. These panels, made up of relevant experts external to government, will scrutinise plans and preparedness for whole-system civil emergencies through document reviews and interviews. This approach has been developed in ongoing consultation with devolved governments to ensure consistent and effective implementation.
21. The Cabinet Office has established specific functions within the COBR Directorate in respect of two groups of catastrophic risks - biological security and home defence.

• To protect against biosecurity risks, the UK has also adopted the UK Biological Security Strategy (2023), which sets out the vision, mission and plans to respond to biosecurity risks and affirms that pandemic preparedness and other biosecurity risks remain a top priority for the government[4].
• A new Home Defence Programme will, in line with our partners and allies, be the means through which the UK Government, led by the Cabinet Office, coordinates across departments and agencies in the event of major conflict to ensure joined up and collective preparedness for a whole of society endeavour.

22.                    More detail on our work on biological security and home defence is provided below.
23.                    Beyond departmental responsibilities, the Government is collectively responsible for ensuring that we understand and are prepared for the risks the UK faces overall - for most risks, but especially those with the biggest cascading impacts across sectors, one government department cannot be solely responsible for all mitigating actions. Successful preparedness relies on a collaborative approach and a shared sense of ownership across government departments and the wider system.
24.                    To maintain strong central grip and coordination over resilience matters alongside the Lead Government Department model, the Prime Minister has established a single ministerial committee, the National Security Council sub-committee on Resilience (NSC(R)). Chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Committee makes collective decisions on our strategic choices to build medium and long-term resilience and preparedness against the range of risks, informed by regular assessment and horizon scanning.

Responding to Emergencies

25. The Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 establishes a single framework for Civil Protection in the UK. Part 1 of the Act establishes a clear set of roles and responsibilities for Local Responders; Part 2 of the Act establishes emergency powers.
26. The UK Government’s Amber Book provides a framework for how the UK Government collectively responds to crises that require co-ordinated action across government. It sets out the principles, structures and arrangements that underpin and inform the central government response to a crisis, and describes key roles and responsibilities for response, including information on the relationship between the central, regional and local tiers within England, and the relationship between UK central government and the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
27. The use of data to inform decision making has been transformed through the establishment of the National Situation Centre in 2021, which provides situational awareness for crisis response, bringing together data, analysis and critical expertise. It is already highly regarded internationally as a benchmark for the use of data in crisis, and represents a fundamental improvement since the pandemic - data now leads responses by default.
28. The establishment of the National Situation Centre means that we are better prepared to use anonymised and aggregated data to support strategic decision making on a range of national emergencies where that data is available. More than 700 such data sets have been mapped or ingested and, at short notice, we can produce analysis for over 85% of risks identified in the NSRA, and this coverage is ever expanding.
29. Dashboards are now available on our Data, Analytics and Situational Awareness Hub, which collate information from government and non-government sources so that those working on a crisis have access to relevant and timely data related to that crisis and provide support to strategic decision making. They are hosted on a dedicated secure platform, built by the National Situation Centre, and are shared across government and with the devolved governments, supported by a dedicated crisis liaison officer.
30. Supported by the ONS, the National Situation Centre has also created a Risk Vulnerability Tool (RVT) to estimate the number of people who are vulnerable to the negative impacts of NSRA risks. It is available made available across government, including the devolved governments, through the aforementioned Data, Analytics and Situational Awareness Hub, supporting faster understanding of the scale and location of disproportionately impacted populations ahead of and during crises.
31. The National Situation Centre has been supported since early 2024 by a ‘Crisis Surge Team’, a pool of trained ONS analysts called upon to provide the Situation Centre with support during times of concurrent or enduring crises. This ensures skilled analysts can be deployed swiftly and efficiently to support matters of national importance.
32. To respond to emergencies, the Emergency Alerts system is one of many public warning and informing capabilities that the UK government, devolved governments and Category 1 responders have at their disposal. It is an integral part of keeping the public safe as it allows for quick sharing of life-saving information. Since its launch in 2023, the system has been activated seven times during emergencies to minimise risk to life. The Government continues to ensure the resilience of the system through regular technical testing and national tests.
33. The government is committed to learning lessons from previous emergencies, Inquiries, national exercises and international best practice, complemented by the Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance, published on GOV.UK in 2024, and the publicly available Lessons Digest. Recent extreme weather events such as Storm Goretti have highlighted the importance of this process, and as such the Cabinet Office has recently committed to a comprehensive review of the response to Storm Goretti to ensure that lessons across government are captured to improve our response for future extreme weather events.

Biological Security

34. The biosecurity landscape has continued to shift significantly in recent years. The threats to humans, animals, plants, the environment and the economy out to 2030 are more likely, diverse and interconnected.
35. One of the most significant threats is the use of biological weapons by hostile states, which risks permanently scarring the UK’s long term social and economic resilience. Continued erosion of the rules-based international system requires strengthened deterrence and defence against this. Alongside this, the rapid development of advanced technologies, such as AI-enabled scientific tools and engineering biology applications, techniques and tools, are further augmenting and shifting the risk landscape.
36. The occurrence of another pandemic also remains a significant risk, and is a case of ‘when’, rather than ‘if’. To protect against this, the UK must continue to strengthen its collective defences, taking an integrated One Health approach that protects the public and the economy.
37. To address these risks, the Government published and adopted the Biological Security Strategy (BSS) in 2023, which sets out the vision, mission and plans to ensure that by 2030 the UK is resilient to a spectrum of biological risks and a world leader in responsible innovation. This requires flexibility, strong UK leadership to help cohere a robust international response, and innovative approaches to stay ahead of emerging threats.
38. Since the publication of the strategy, the Government has remained committed to its implementation and has delivered all published short-term commitments, with activities undertaken informed by our understanding of the changing risk picture. As set out in the strategy, the Government will continue to provide annual updates to Parliament on progress made to implement it.
39. Ensuring the UK is prepared for a pandemic is a top priority, and the Biological Security Strategy commits to the development of a new strategic approach across government to prepare the UK for a range of scenarios. As part of this, the Government concluded the largest ever national pandemic exercise in 2025 to test the country’s capabilities, plans, protocols and procedures. The findings and lessons from this will be communicated as recommended by the Covid-19 Inquiry, and were also used to inform the development of DHSC’s Pandemic Preparedness Strategy, which was published on 25 March[5].
40. In an evolving threat landscape, the UK cannot be complacent and must continue to go further to get ahead of the risks we face. Over the next 12 months, the Government will continue to evolve its capabilities and innovate to understand, prevent, detect and respond effectively, ensuring that it has the capabilities to protect the public from a spectrum of biological threats, no matter how they occur and who or what they affect.

Home Defence

41. We are experiencing a deteriorating international security environment. Threats to the UK and its interests are increasing and we are seeing hostile state actors working together more than at any time in recent history.
42. The UK Government has robust plans in place to manage the most severe risks to the UK, and constantly reviews a broad range of scenarios with allies and industry. The Home Defence Programme supports these joint efforts and will seek to deliver the various related commitments from the Strategic Defence Review, National Security Strategy and Resilience Action Plan. This is based on the latest assessment of threats and risks, whilst bringing together our defence and civilian planning to reflect the increasingly interconnected and interdependent world that we live in.
43. We are working with NATO and other partners as we develop the HDP. A shared understanding of the risks we face is fundamental and we are therefore taking a broad focus on resilience including how we structure the centre of the UK Government, our expectations of businesses, the local tier, voluntary organisations, community groups, and the public as detailed in the UK's Resilience Action Plan. Together, this allows for a better and more efficient use of our capabilities and resources.

Skills, Training & Exercising

44. A key part of the UK government’s approach to resilience is providing excellent training, exercising and appropriate governance to ensure that individual sectors are able to work together in preparing for, responding to and recovering from crises, and consequently to drive whole of society resilience.
45. The UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) was launched in April 2025 to improve the resilience learning offer and build the skills needed across the whole of society, training over 4000 people a year in resilience and emergency roles. It provides enhanced learning opportunities available to everyone in the UK, and will reach multiple sectors including central and devolved government; local government, LRFs, NHS, and emergency responders; VCFS organisations; private sector organisations (including CNI); Higher Education Institutions (HEIs); and wider society including individuals, households and communities. In doing so, it also acts as a convener across partnerships and networks, bringing together organisations from across the UK with common interests in resilience learning, education and communities of practice.
46. Training and upskilling the individuals that make up the public sector resilience system is also essential to ensure they are equipped for when crises occur. The Crisis Management Excellence Programme (CMEP), launched in 2023, is the UK Government’s flagship crisis management programme, training more than 9,000 civil servants across UK and devolved governments over the course of this parliament, including Permanent Secretaries and Directors General, to ensure that our response is the best it can be when crises occur.
47. Alongside this, bespoke crisis leadership and national security training is also being rolled out for Ministers and SpAds following a successful pilot, to prepare them for attending meetings on crisis response and for the unique role they play in a crisis.
48. To test our real world resilience, the government has committed to a new National Exercising Programme (NEP) that will deliver annual national (‘Tier 1’) exercises on a wide range of risks involving actors from across society, with the priority areas for testing informed by cross-cutting and systemic vulnerabilities and capability gaps. The national exercise for 2025 tested our ability to respond to a pandemic and was the biggest ever pandemic exercise in the UK, involving all regions and nations of the UK and thousands of participants.
49. The Government also supports the Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles (JESIP) underpinning approach for all multi-agency (e.g., police, fire, ambulance, etc.) response working, to further bolster coordination during crises. This includes maintaining a skilled central team, refreshing governance structures and processes, and updating guidance and training products.
50. As the programme of annual Tier 1 exercises progresses, findings and lessons will be communicated to inform future resilience policy and support continuous improvement, as set out in the Government’s response to the COVID-19 Inquiry.

Working with the Devolved Governments and with the Local Tier

51. The Government fully recognises that risks and emergencies do not respect borders, and is committed to working in partnership with both the devolved governments and the local tier to effectively plan for, and respond to, risks wherever they occur.
52. It is vital that the four nations across the UK work together to keep communities safe. To ensure we are most effectively using the different levers each government holds to better protect the communities we serve, all four nations have agreed to establish a Four Nation Ministerial Group, which will meet regularly to discuss and align resilience matters across the UK.
53. Improvements to crisis response structures across the four nations, including representation at COBR meetings and alignment on crisis communications, are also outlined in the Government’s response to the Covid-19 Module 2 Report, published on 25 March[6].
54. There are thousands of individuals and organisations that make up the public sector resilience system, and it is essential that they work effectively as a system so that we can get maximum benefit from each. To improve the public sector resilience system, the Government will improve clarity of roles and responsibilities through enhanced guidance and legislation; better connect the system by upgrading digital tools and more effectively sharing up-to-date, timely data with partners; and improve quality of work via Stronger LRF Trailblazers, training opportunities and scientific and technological advice mechanisms and capabilities.
55. Civil society plays an important role in the UK’s resilience, including the many voluntary, community and faith sector (VCFS) organisations that contribute to community-level resilience and emergency planning activity. The Government is committed to enhancing our work with these organisations, and launched a public consultation in July 2025 to explore the potential impacts of an enhanced statutory duty as an option to improve engagement between Category 1 emergency responders and VCFS organisations. The government response was published in December 2025, and we have committed to undertaking further analysis on the data and considering alternative options, including non-regulatory changes to strengthen partnership working.
56. Work also continues to progress the implementation of the recommendations from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 2 recommendations, which focus on the underlying causes of the disaster and the response of central and local government. The first Annual Report was published by MHCLG in February 2026, which sets out a detailed account of work undertaken over the past year and milestones and plans for the year ahead and beyond. This reflects ongoing work to strengthen the systems and processes that form the built environment and response and recovery activity.
     
57. All emergencies happen in a place and most preparedness activities and incident responses are handled within the capabilities of local agencies. Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) are a critical part of England’s resilience system, bringing together local partners, resources and expertise to plan for, respond to and recover from emergencies. As place‑based, multi‑agency partnerships, LRFs lead local risk assessment, preparedness and response activity, reflecting the principle that most risks are managed at the local level, and ensuring that national priorities, statutory duties and guidance are translated into effective local action.
58. The UK Government plays an important role in supporting and strengthening LRFs. A key part of this is ensuring that local leaders are empowered to build and protect the resilience of their communities. The Stronger LRF Trailblazers programme provides selected areas with the opportunity to test approaches to strengthening leadership, capability and accountability within LRFs, in line with the government’s wider commitment to strengthening the public sector resilience system. This has been launched in five local areas, and we are committed to learning rapidly from the initial two-year period (2025/26 and 2026/27), including via an independent evaluation.
59. In parallel, the Government is strengthening partnership‑level assurance across LRFs through a more consistent and structured approach to understanding local preparedness. This includes developing a nationally supported peer review offer and improving local self-assessment preparedness reporting. Alongside this, MHCLG and the Cabinet Office will continue to run the Local Capability Assessment programme, which evaluates preparedness against specific response capabilities across all 38 LRFs. Taken together, this activity will provide stronger national visibility of preparedness while supporting improvement at the local level.
60. One of the Government’s key priorities is to continue strengthening links between Local Resilience Forums and central government. This is supported through regular engagement with MHCLG Resilience Advisers, national Chairs’ forums, and structured engagement with Lead Government Departments and Cabinet Office; helping to improve connectivity, clarity of roles and shared understanding across the resilience system.
61. The Cabinet Office has also set out a renewed offer to LRFs in England, clarifying the support they can expect from the centre. This includes more regular engagement and new opportunities to strengthen connections between the national and local tiers, such as inviting potential Strategic Coordinating Group Chairs to attend COBR to gain insight into central government decision‑making and capabilities.We have also developed a new response capability to be activated during certain crises: a rapidly deployable and self-sufficient COBR Liaison team that will provide crisis management expertise, enhanced access and engagement with central government crisis capabilities, and that can offer support and advice for local leadership.

Engagement with the public and businesses

62. Building a truly resilient society requires a fundamental, cultural shift in the way emergency preparedness is thought about, both amongst businesses and the general public. To support us to do this we must do more to provide households and businesses with information on preparedness, increasing transparency around risk and resilience and setting out practical steps to improve preparedness.
63. To do this effectively, we must improve our understanding of public attitudes to risk and resilience to inform future communications. To address this, last year the Government carried out and published the results from its first annual UK Public Survey of Risk perception, Resilience and Preparedness, which collected data to evaluate the impact of public communications. The findings from the second annual survey will be published this year.
64. Making the UK more resilient relies on the actions of many groups both inside and outside of government. To improve transparency around risk and practical advice on improving preparedness, the GOV.UK/PREPARE website provides guidance on the actions recommended for individuals, households and communities to increase their own preparedness and resilience, and has committed to including guidance for businesses in the future. This will ensure that the right foundations are in place at the local level to support our resilience at a national level. Our approach to engagement with the public in risks is informed by the results of the risk perceptions survey and engagement with international partners.
65. The Resilience Action Plan set out the Government's intention to establish a strategic resilience forum to bring together the UK government, devolved governments, the local tier, the VCFS and businesses to build relationships and work together to strengthen the UK’s resilience. Work has begun to scope and develop this with plans expected to materialise in summer 2026.
66. The resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) is of central importance to ensuring that the essential services the public rely on continue to operate. Given the fundamental and connected nature of these services, failure has the potential to cause cascading and catastrophic consequences.
67. The Government is committed to working closely with owners and operators of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) in the UK to maintain and improve the resilience of our most critical systems and assets. We are identifying our most critical systems and assets and their interdependencies, as well as using the best available data to map the risk landscape. With this we can take prioritised, targeted interventions to close identified vulnerabilities. We have a shared interest with owners and operators of CNI in protecting their systems and assets, and the partnerships we have reflect our whole-of-society approach. However, the Government is always prepared to use legislation or other measures to ensure the right standards of resilience are being reached.
68. The Government also regularly engages the public and Parliamentarians on risk and resilience through its annual statement to parliament, which gives an overview of the current risk picture, performance on resilience and the current state of preparedness and what the UK government will do to respond.

Conclusion

69. The Resilience Action Plan sets out a broad range of activity that the Government will deliver over the course of this Parliament to strengthen the UK’s national resilience. This includes new work to progress the implementation of several key commitments made in the Resilience Action Plan to ensure that we are delivering against all three of its objectives.
70. One of these priorities is to develop a common methodology for measuring overall national resilience, which will allow us to more effectively assess whether the UK is ready to absorb and adapt to threats and risks and inform trade-offs between different risk areas. The Government will develop a consolidated, data-driven picture of our resilience baseline that is UK-wide and considers a variety of resilience indicators (for example, training and exercising, community capacity and capabilities or organisational resilience). This will be developed in collaboration with the UK Resilience Academy, who will convene relevant experts from across society to inform it.

Call for Evidence Questions

Risk assessment

1. How far are national and international risks inter-connected, including across different sectors and across short-term and long-term risks, and what are the implications for the national approach towards preparedness and resilience?

As described in the Government’s submission above, we are living through a rapidly changing global risk landscape, where the threats facing the UK are numerous, complex and exist on many fronts. In such a context, it is essential that our approach to resilience accounts for the fact that national and international risks are increasingly inextricably connected, with the driving forces and impacts of each spanning multiple countries, global sectors and international actors.

The National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) is the government's assessment of the most serious risks facing the UK and its interests overseas. During every update, policy makers are encouraged to identify both linked risks and compounding risks to ensure preparedness for simultaneous domestic and international challenges.

The NSRA considers international impacts as one of its 7 broad dimensions for assessing risk impact. This includes factors such as damage to the UK’s international relations and ability to project soft power, disruption to internal development, disruption to international development, violation of international law and norms, and international displacement and migration.
The Lead Government Department (LGD) model ensures departments with the day-to-day responsibility for an issue or sector are responsible for leading work to identify serious risks and ensuring that the right planning, response and recovery arrangements are in place. To ensure this works effectively, the Government provides clear advice and guidance to departments to enable effective cross-government preparation.

2. What national risks could have the most severe impact in a reasonable worst-case scenario, including nuclear accidents and loss of control of satellite communications?

The UK faces a broad and diverse range of risks, including threats to lives, health, society, critical infrastructure, economy and sovereignty. Risks may be non-malicious, such as accidents or natural hazards, or they may be malicious threats from malign actors who seek to do us harm. The risks that meet the threshold for inclusion in the NSRA would have a substantial impact on the UK’s safety, security and/or critical systems at a national level. All risks in the NSRA, including nuclear risks and those related to satellite communications, are kept under review to ensure that they are the most appropriate scenarios to inform emergency preparedness and resilience activity.

The risks that have been assessed to have the highest impact rating in the NSRA are known as ‘catastrophic risks’.

The Government’s work on preparedness for catastrophic risks is described above, and includes the leadership role of the Cabinet Office in our central crisis management doctrine, the Amber Book; strengthened governance with LGDs to drive forward progress on risk planning; clearly set out indicative thresholds for when the Cabinet Office will lead the response in catastrophic emergencies in planning documents; and ensured a true whole-of-government response by mapping key cascading impacts of catastrophic risks.

3. Since the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, what changes have there been to the national resilience implications of the geopolitical environment for defence spending, development of the country’s industrial base, and military recruitment?

The Government is delivering the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War. Defence spending will reach 2.6% of GDP in 2027, and the UK defence budget will total £270 billion across this Parliament alone. The total increase in defence spending in this financial year is over £5Bn, bringing the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) budget for 2025/26 to £62.2Bn. The Government has also set an ambition to spend 3% in the next Parliament, as fiscal and economic conditions allow. We are delivering a ‘defence dividend’ from this record investment – felt in good jobs and thriving businesses across the UK’s nations and regions.

The 2025 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) sets the vision for the future of UK Defence for the coming decade and beyond, making Britain secure at home and strong abroad. As the SDR makes clear, the world is more dangerous and less predictable than at any time since the Cold War. The SDR sets out how we will meet this by being warfighting-ready, being NATO-first, being an engine of growth, and increasing innovation.

The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is the first zero-based review of Defence’s budgets in eighteen years and goes significantly further than the last Government’s Equipment Plan by looking across every budget line, including people and infrastructure.

The UK is responding to a more volatile global environment. Unlike previous plans, the DIP will detail the prioritised capabilities and infrastructure the UK need to respond to emerging threats, forecasting and detailing our plan for the next decade. It will be designed to be deliverable and affordable, and it will highlight how the Government’s historic investment in Defence will deliver warfighting readiness to deter increasing threats. It will also drive Defence as an engine for jobs and growth.

We are getting on with the job of delivering on our SDR. In recent months, we have identified at least 13 sites for always-on munitions factories, secured a £1bn helicopter deal which safeguards 3,300 British jobs, boosts battlefield kit and unlocks up to £15bn in UK exports, published the Defence Housing Strategy and Defence Industrial Strategy, secured an £8bn Typhoon deal with Turkey which will help sustain a 20,000 strong UK wide workforce and production lines in Scotland, Lancashire and Bristol, and landed the largest ever British warship deal – for Type 26 frigates with Norway, pumping £10billion into Britain’s economy and securing 4,000 British jobs. We have signed more than 1,200 major defence contracts since coming into office in July 2024, 86% of which have been with British-based businesses, and we have spent more than £31 billion with UK industry last year – an above inflation increase in spending.

As set out in the SDR, we are strengthening recruitment into the Armed Forces through various initiatives. The first ever fast-tracked cyber recruits have graduated from the Defence Cyber Academy and are entering operational roles. We are offering new opportunities for young people to experience and join military service, through the plans to launch the new Armed Forces ‘Gap Year’ Foundation Scheme and the new partnership between MoD and Department for Work and Pensions to boost Armed Forces training and careers through job centres. UK Regular Armed Forces intake is now greater than outflow at the Tri-service level, for the first time in 4 years.

4. What risks does the private sector face, including to cyber activity and supply chains, and how do these vary across key industries, such as finance, food, water, medicine, and transport?
   In our rapidly evolving risk environment, risks are increasingly interconnected and have cascading impacts across a wide range of industries and sectors. A lack of resilience in a business or its supply chance can lead to huge disruption and impacts to both a business’s finances and its reputation, with knock on impacts for the public. It is therefore essential that resilience is considered a strategic matter for the private sector as well as for the public sector.

The Government fully recognises the importance of this, and is absolutely committed to sharing risk information as openly as possible, to support all those working to build the UK’s resilience with their planning, preparation and response activity. The publicly available National Risk Register (NRR) provides an invaluable resource for businesses, including small- and medium- sized enterprises and those who operate critical national infrastructure (CNI), who have a need to understand the most serious risks that could impact their business continuity. It outlines information on the most significant risks to the UK many of which affect the private sector, including cyber risks, systems failure, supply chain vulnerabilities, natural and environmental hazards, and health risks, and also underpins the public guidance at GOV.UK/Prepare.

The National Cyber Security Centre provides resources for businesses through its Cyber Essentials products, which set the minimum standard of cyber security recommended by the Government for organisations of all sizes.

Whole of Society Approach

5. How can a shared vision be developed to improve preparedness and resilience across the whole of society?

The Resilience Action Plan (RAP), published in July 2025, sets out the UK government’s strategic vision for a stronger and more resilient UK and the steps being taken to deliver this.

A key part of the vision in the Resilience Action Plan is to make resilience a ‘whole-of-society’ endeavour, which means that every person, every community, every civil society group, every business and all of the public sector have a stake in our national resilience.

This will help make the UK more resilient in a variety of ways - including through communicating the actions recommended for individuals, households, communities and businesses to increase their preparedness, creating a culture where everyone plays a role in how we respond to a crisis. However, we also acknowledge that not all parts of society have the same resources (time, money, access) to be able to contribute to national resilience. The voluntary, faith and community sector (VCFS) are well placed to help understand these inequalities as well as supporting a more equitable approach to resilience

LRFs also play a critical role as place‑based, multi‑agency partnerships that coordinate risk planning, response and recovery activity. Strengthening these partnerships, and ensuring they have the capacity and capability to deliver effectively, is essential to embedding a shared vision of resilience that is grounded in local context while aligned with national priorities. This is complemented by work to engage Strategic Authorities and Mayors, clarifying and enhancing their role in local resilience and aligning this with wider commitments set out in the Devolution White Paper and the Resilience Action Plan.

Bringing together national and local leaders helps to build a common understanding of risks, system pressures and reform priorities, and creates space to shape a collective view of how resilience should evolve over time. This approach supports clearer alignment between national policy intent and local delivery, as demonstrated through engagement with LRF Chairs and other local partners at the LRF Chairs Conference.

The 2025 Strategic Defence Review commits the UK to a ‘whole-of-society approach’ to national resilience. With multiple threats and challenges facing us now, and in the future, everyone has a role to play, and a national conversation on how we do it is required.

By working closely with local authorities, MPs and communities we will better demonstrate the contribution our Armed Forces make to national prosperity, to technology, skills, and innovation, as well as security. For example, since coming into government in July 2024, we’ve restored the national annual Armed Forces Day event in June. The national event is part of our wider commitment to renewing the nation’s contract with those who serve, and a whole of society approach to Defence, as set out in the Strategic Defence Review.

6. How can understanding of preparedness and resilience be improved, with action encouraged at all levels of society so that these priorities are both seen as relevant and achievable in practice?

Delivering enhanced resilience across society requires a profound cultural and behavioural shift, and needs to be informed by robust social and behavioural science evidence. We will need to go further and ask all parts of society to play an active role to strengthen our resilience, and to do so, we need to be clear what the UK government is asking of different groups and how it will enable them to respond.

A key part of this is asking and supporting the public, if they are able to do so, to prepare for emergencies as set out on the GOV.UK/Prepare website, which communicates the actions recommended for individuals, households, communities to increase their own preparedness and resilience. This will allow urgent support to be directed towards those who need it most.

The Government recognises that societal resilience shouldn’t be seen as a ‘one way street’, characterised only by the Government encouraging people to play their part in resilience. Different levels of society - from national charities to community groups to informal volunteers - already do respond in a crisis, and have their own specific needs to achieve their goals in doing so. The Government is committed to working with these groups to support their efforts as part of our national resilience. This includes involving communities directly in planning and preparedness to strengthen civil society resilience, and building on strong local practice, such as power‑outage planning in Wiltshire and Swindon, community‑led flood preparedness in Lincolnshire, and Trailblazer engagement (Cumbria and London) with community groups.

The 2025 Strategic Defence Review commits Britain to a ‘whole-of-society approach’ to national resilience. The Strategic Reserve is part of how we deliver that – keeping those who have served connected to defence and ensuring the skills and experience they have built continue to benefit our country. We will, as part of a wider communications plan identify and seek to engage with these key stakeholders to explain the changes to them, why they are being made, how they will be implemented, and what impact the changes will have on them.

7. How can the preparedness and resilience of civil society be strengthened, such as through funding community organisations and the inclusion of people of all ages and from all backgrounds?

Civil society plays an important role in the UK’s resilience, and national and local governments work with many formal VCFS organisations that contribute to national and community-level resilience and emergency planning activity. In an emergency, the sector is able to quickly mobilise volunteers, provide capacity, essential services, and offer emotional and practical support to people and communities affected by emergencies. Their deep understanding of local needs, ability to build trust within communities, and specialist capabilities make them an essential partner in emergency planning, response and recovery.

The Government is committed to enhancing our work with these organisations and making better use of the work already undertaken by the sector, noting the financial pressures and challenges they often face. As part of this, we launched a public consultation in July 2025 exploring the impacts of an enhanced statutory duty to improve engagement between Category 1 emergency responders and VCFS organisations. The government response was published in December 2025, and we have committed to undertaking further analysis on the data and considering alternative options, including non-regulatory changes to strengthen partnership working.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is working to create a strong and inclusive civil society. It is developing guidance which will set expectations on how UK government departments should work with relevant VCFS partners to prepare, respond and recover from national emergencies. Since 2022, it has also funded the Voluntary and Communities Sector Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP), a network of over 300 local, regional and national voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations which supports its partners to help formal and informal groups that may face or be affected by emergencies to prepare, respond and recover from them. Alongside this, VCFS organisations are also being integrated into national exercises to help strengthen their resilience to future emergencies, including participating in the recent pandemic preparedness exercise.

On defence, the Strategic Defence Review recommended that there should be an expansion of in- school and community-based Cadet Forces across the country by 30% by 2030 (the ‘30 by 30’ programme), with an ambition to reach 250,000 in the longer term and a greater focus on developing STEM skills and exploring modern technology. Cadets help to maintain society’s awareness of the Armed Forces, and the role of Defence. Equally, membership of the Cadet Forces gives young people a better understanding of the Armed Forces and Defence, and develops them into responsible, resilient, and engaged citizens. They enhance societal resilience through skills such as leadership, teamwork, discipline, and community spirit and strengthen understanding of Defence among the public.

Communication and Information

8. What does the public perceive to be the biggest risks, and how can communication help to provide information about these risks, including those that are already established or materialising, and support conversations about attitudes towards preparedness and resilience?

Driving a conversation on risk and preparedness with the public is vitally important. The Government continues to build on work across the whole of the UK to increase transparency with the general public on the risks we face, through GOV.UK/Prepare, Ready Scotland, Foreign Travel Advice and the deployment of Emergency Alerts in the UK.

A key part communicating this effectively is understanding public perception of risks, to support conversations about attitudes towards preparedness and resilience. The Government ran the first UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness last year. The survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of over 10,000 UK adults between March and April 2025. Insights from the survey were published in July 2025[7].

9. What are the risks of disinformation concerning preparedness and resilience, including through digital channels and around elections, and how can these be mitigated, such as through the involvement of community organisations?
   The Chronic risks analysis (CRA) was published in July 2025 and is the UK Government’s first bespoke risk assessment for medium to long term risks. It complements the National Risk Register (NRR), which focuses on the UK’s most serious acute risks. One of the key chronic risks the Government outlines in its Chronic Risks Analysis is the spread of disinformation and misinformation, defined as the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or manipulated information intended to deceive and mislead, and inadvertently spreading such false information, respectively. Both pose risks to society, particularly marginalised groups, the economy and national security. Disinformation campaigns, for example, can undermine social cohesion or inflame pre-existing tensions.

Current evidence shows that disinformation has always been spread by malign actors, including foreign state-backed actors, as a tactic to promote their agendas or weaken another country. Political polarisation also exacerbates the spread of misinformation, particularly in the context of digital and social media, where a lack of digital literacy skills can hinder people’s ability to critically assess sources. This is made more significant by the shift away from traditional news sources like TV and print media to digital platforms, where editorial standards are less rigorous and algorithms prioritise engagement over accuracy, leading to a proliferation of dis/misinformation. This, in turn, has the potential to polarise public debates, reduce trust in institutions, and endanger environmental and public health.

As part of its Chronic Risks Analysis, the Government outlines several example mitigations to protect against the risk of disinformation and misinformation. This includes the requirement in the Online Safety Act for companies to remove illegal dis/misinformation; the work of the Defending Democracy Taskforce to reduce interference in UK democratic processes; and additional government funding to the BBC world service, a platform which plays a crucial role in shaping the global landscape by delivering impartial and accurate news to an audience of 320 million.

Misinformation and disinformation is not only considered when focusing on chronic risks but also when considering acute manifestations. During every update of the NRR, policy makers must also evidence how chronic risks — as set out in the Chronic Risks Analysis, including disinformation and misinformation — interact with and exacerbate acute events.

Community organisations also have a significant role to play in strengthening our resilience against disinformation and misinformation. The Government has recently published a Local Media Action Plan, in recognition of the importance of local journalism. A key element is to protect the role of local media as a key channel of trustworthy information at local level, which can aid social cohesion and civic engagement as well as countering disinformation at local level.

While these mitigations can help to protect against this risk to some extent, however, there remain some long-term uncertainties over the trajectory of the risk. For example, in future, people may increasingly view digital environments as preventing open debate, pushing groups to more fringe platforms, and the further spread of dis/misinformation may erode public trust, potentially leading to disengagement from democratic processes. Equally, however, improved media literacy and digital skills could make users more critical of information, enhancing trust in fact-based news sources.

10. How should communication concerning preparedness and resilience, including the national curriculum, be targeted for particular groups, including young people aged 11-17, students, and vulnerable people?

The consequences of emergencies do not fall evenly across our society. Assessing, planning for and communicating with both young people, and people who are vulnerable to emergencies, is a key part of strengthening our national resilience.

To improve our understanding of the way in which risks impact vulnerable people and create new vulnerabilities, the Government has stood up an independent expert panel through the NSRA Expert Advisory Programme. We have developed a Risk Vulnerability Tool (RVT) so that we can analyse what particular challenges different scenarios might create for vulnerable people, so we can mitigate them both before and during a crisis response. This will inform new guidance and establish a more comprehensive approach to how vulnerabilities are assessed within the NSRA.

Actions recommended to improve preparedness for all groups, including vulnerable people, are also outlined on the GOV.UK/Prepare website. The website also includes specific preparedness advice for disabled persons and carers. In the Resilience Action Plan the Government committed to developing additional specific advice aimed at supporting the needs of individuals most at risk of being disproportionately impacted in emergencies. As part of this work the Government is exploring options to create material on resilience and preparedness targeted at children and young people that could be used by educational establishments where they wish to do so.

Cross-cutting issues

11. What barriers have there been to implementing improvements to preparedness and resilience, such as inaction, inappropriate structures, inadequate funding, and short-term thinking?

The Spending Review 2025 was the first time the Government ran a coordinated approach to resilience, cyber and biosecurity at a Spending Review (SR). The Cabinet Office oversaw the process which involved reviewing departmental resilience spending within indicative budgets and supporting Departments to clearly prioritise through additional HMT assessment. The Government will ensure resilience spending is tracked against the baseline established at SR25 as we move through the SR period and with a view to future spending reviews.

The Government is committed to working with the wider public sector resilience system, the private sector and individuals to strengthen the UK’s resilience. As part of this, however, it also recognises that resilience is a choice, built on the underlying capability of public services, the prioritisation of resilience by businesses, and the actions of individuals. While the Government provides clear guidance, advice and support to these groups to enable them to improve their preparedness and resilience, it also relies on their own decision to take an active role in their resilience.

There are thousands of individuals and organisations that make up the public sector resilience system. The UK’s model for responding to risks ensures that the responsibility and oversight sits with those that have the greatest understanding, networks and capabilities to identify, respond, recover from and address risks; with decisions taken at the lowest appropriate level and coordinated at the highest appropriate level. To get maximum benefit from these dispersed organisations, they need to work effectively as a system: each part needs to understand its accountabilities, expectations and how to connect between local, regional and national levels in an escalating crisis. The Government provides clear guidance and training opportunities to support this, but also relies on the strategic choices made by these organisations to strengthen their resilience.

The private sector also has access to a wide range of levers which support their own resilience and that of the public overall. However, for this to have the full effect, it is important that resilience is considered a strategic matter for management boards, supported by their risk professionals and business continuity leads. The Government believes resilience is a topic that Boards should be discussing frequently and working to embed within their organisations.

12. What legislative measures should be considered to improve preparedness and resilience, such as a Defence Readiness Act and duties for organisations to incorporate resilience into their internal planning and business models?

The Ministry of Defence is currently working to develop Defence Readiness legislation to ensure the Government has the powers it needs to keep the UK safe in crisis or conflict, as recommended in the Strategic Defence Review. The introduction of legislation will be brought forward when Parliamentary time allows.

Through the Armed Forces Bill, the Ministry of Defence is amending the Reserve Forces Act (RFA 96), which makes provision for matters including call out for and recall to permanent Service. These measures increase Defence’s powers and flexibility to call out and/or recall former personnel at pace and scale in a potential crisis such as a transition to war, helping us respond to the unstable geopolitical outlook and threats that we face.

Private businesses are broadly free, regulation permitting, to act in their own commercial interests. This is essential for growth, and supports societal resilience. However, it carries the risk in some circumstances that companies may behave in ways consistent with the interests of their stakeholders and balance sheets, but without recognition of the fact that the UK’s CNI sectors, as well as wider essential services, and the public at large are wholly dependent on their operations. This risk is often amplified by wider factors such as global supply chain issues, as seen in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the absence of alternative products or services.

At present, heavily-regulated sectors have some legislation (e.g., the Energy Act 1976) available which allows for a degree of intervention in some sector operations to preserve national security and mitigate the impacts of an emergency. More widely, the UK government currently has few legislative means through which to deliver rapid, non-consensual interventions in the case of company behaviour which may give rise to an emergency.

The Cabinet Office will consider, as part of the Civil Contingencies Act Review, whether additional options for intervention in cases of emergency (as defined in the Act), set out in legislation, might be a beneficial extension of the Act.

13. What lessons concerning preparedness and resilience can the UK learn from other countries, including Nordic countries, and how can it facilitate international co-operation on these issues?

The UK Government is also proud to be part of an international community of resilience learning where we can both learn from, and share our learnings with, others. Many of the UK’s resilience structures and capabilities serve as examples of international best practice: for example, the National Situation Centre, established in 2021 to provide situational awareness for crisis response and national resilience, is already highly regarded internationally. To encourage and facilitate this shared learning, the UK Government regularly meets with and hosts foreign delegations to discuss best practice on resilience, as well as visiting other countries to learn more about their approaches. There are many commonalities to resilience, but each Nation’s approach is influenced by its recent and past history, geography and societal approach to resilience.

One important example of this is learning from international approaches to public communications on risk. The need to drive public conversation on risk and preparedness is not unique to the UK. While some countries, such as Japan, take the approach of continual education on potential dangers through reminders, public service announcements, and within formal education; others, such as Sweden’s ‘Total Defence’ programme, expect a mass mobilisation in times of crisis, placing a more active role on the population to address the crisis itself. More generally, many European countries promote population preparedness through communicating a 72 hour household preparedness message to their populations, and there are several high profile national campaigns (e.g. Germany, Sweden and Norway) asking people to prepare for a week or longer. Our approach to engagement with the public in risks is informed by the results of the risk perceptions survey and engagement with international partners.

The Government will regularly update the emergency preparedness advice and information on GOV.UK/Prepare and will consider how it can most effectively deliver public communications on risk and resilience, including the way in which messaging will land with the public.

14. How were preparedness and resilience achieved in the past, such as during the Second World War, and what are the implications for the current environment?
     

The government is committed to learning lessons from previous emergencies, Inquiries, national exercises and international best practice, complemented by the Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance, published on gov.uk in 2024, and the publicly available Lessons Digest.

Resilience is a function of society, including the institutions, attitudes, organisations, technology and threat landscape at the time of a crisis. As such, recent experiences provide invaluable insights as to how the UK government is likely to cope with, and respond to, similar events in the future, informing our medium- and long- term strategic choices to build resilience. To ensure we are capturing and embedding the most relevant lessons, the Government has launched, provided evidence to and implemented lessons from recent inquiries on some of the UK’s most significant crises, including strengthening local resilience in line with the recommendations in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report and improving our crisis response structures in line with recommendations in the Covid-19 Module 1 and Module 2 reports. The Cabinet Office has also recently committed to a comprehensive review of the response to Storm Goretti to ensure that lessons across government are captured to improve our response for future extreme weather events.

We are currently living in an increasingly unstable and interconnected geopolitical environment, and it is therefore essential that the Government is prepared for the risk of the UK being involved in a major global conflict. As part of this, we must ensure that lessons from previous experiences inform our preparedness and resilience. While the Second World War does provide one example of this, the pace of social, economic and technological change in recent decades means that it no longer provides the most relevant insights on our resilience, and will be considered alongside more recent civil contingencies that provide more useful comparisons to draw on to strengthen the UK’s resilience to current threats, and have more relevant implications for our current environment.

20 April 2026