By Robert Hall
Some people in the Cabinet Office must have been busy over Christmas as by the second week in January both the National Risk Register 2025 and the UK Government’s Response to the Covid-19 Inquiry Module 1 Report were published. The latter was the official statement on the first part of Baroness Hallett’s inquiry which focused on resilience and preparedness: it made ten recommendations. (See a previous Resilience Forward article.)
It is therefore timely to look at the UK Government’s published response and some of the actions proposed when it comes to resilience. Five of the inquiry’s recommendations have been chosen in this article for their importance and the wordage available:
Inquiry recommendation 1
The inquiry recommended introducing a simplified structure for whole-system, civil-emergency preparedness and resilience. It said that the structure should include a ‘single Cabinet-level or equivalent ministerial committee to be chaired by the leader or deputy leader of the relevant government’, plus ‘a single cross-departmental group of senior officials in each government [UK, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland] to oversee and implement policy on civil emergency preparedness and resilience’.
The UK Government has accepted these ideas. A National Security Council (Resilience) has been established as a Cabinet sub-committee, chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In addition, a Resilience Steering Board, chaired by the Cabinet Office Head of Resilience and convened at director level, will meet monthly to co-ordinate and drive implementation of policy on civil-emergency preparedness and resilience.
No mention was made of the previous Government’s establishment of a UK Resilience Forum which met five times over three years until February 2024. It is assumed this body has been allowed to lapse. Hopefully, the Resilience Steering Board will also include representatives from beyond government such as business considering the vital role that the private sector plays in national resilience.
Inquiry recommendation 2
The second recommendation called for ‘abolishing the lead government department [LGD] model’, and for the ‘Cabinet Office to take the lead on preparing for and building resilience to whole-system, civil emergencies’. It was felt that no single LGD could own a national calamity as there would be significant trade-offs in departmental priorities. A cross-departmental, collaborative approach was therefore necessary.
The Government has agreed to a greater role for the Cabinet Office but aimed to retain the LGD model. The belief was that: ‘The system is most effective when responsibilities for resilience are managed by those most able to discharge them, with central support for cross-system collaboration and information sharing.’ The work-horse in an emergency will therefore remain the appropriate LGD with the COBR Unit in Whitehall providing the co-ordinating crisis management in a major emergency.
There may also be a practical reason behind this move. If the Cabinet Office were to take the lead, it would need significant expansion in resources. It is time to consider this. The opportunity has been presented to go beyond committees and discrete entities and create a distinct ministerial department e.g. Ministry for Civil Emergencies or National Resilience, with the cross-cutting remit and capacity to plan for and deliver resilience before, during, and after systemic civil emergencies. Such a ministry could provide the dedicated strategic and operational heft to plan, prepare, and co-ordinate a major response of any kind, without reliance on LGDs.
The proposal may become more significant if homeland resilience were to become a feature of the upcoming Strategic Defence Review. Even more so if other assets like a citizens’ reserve were involved in a whole-nation recovery. While the MoD would be the obvious department to take control of uniformed reserves, there may be little appetite there to organize and train a civilian reserve. This task could well fall within the purview of, say, a Ministry for National Resilience.
Interestingly, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Part 2 Report recommended that consideration be given to granting ‘a designated Secretary of State with the power to carry out the functions of a Category 1 responder [in place of a failing responder] for a limited period of time’ under a revised Civil Contingencies Act 2004. (See Resilience Forward article.)
Inquiry recommendation 3
The inquiry recommended ‘A better approach to risk assessment’. It believed that the Government should develop a new approach to risk assessment that moved away from a reliance on single reasonable worst-case scenarios (RWCS) towards an approach that was broader in outlook and considered the consequences more.
Again, the Government has agreed with the need to improve its approach to risk assessment and offered the classified National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) and open National Risk Register (NRR) as evidence of recent work. It acknowledged that the NSRA has moved to a dynamic assessment process, with risks updated several times a year in response to changes to the risk landscape or new evidence. It will also implement by 2026 the recommendation from the Royal Academy of Engineering to pilot an alternative approach to risk assessment that considers preparedness for risks rather than only the likelihood of risks occurring. Traditional probabilistic methods are increasing untenable in a volatile world.
In a rejection of the inquiry’s findings, the Government believed that ‘a plausible yet challenging [RWCS] is the appropriate benchmark for developing generic response capabilities, which can be deployed for any type or number of risks’. This response seems to be a catch-all for addressing the five ‘flaws’ of the RWCS model identified by the inquiry without delivering a robust alternative. One is always left with the nagging question as to who determines the worst case?
Inquiry recommendation 4
The notion of a ‘UK-wide whole-system civil emergency strategy’ is not new but the inquiry made a good case. It should be adaptable, identify the key issues and responses, and assess the resource needs.
The Government agreed and was ‘therefore implementing a common strategic approach to preparing for and responding to whole-system civil emergencies, which will form part of a refreshed resilience strategy’. This is welcomed after the shortfalls in the UK Government Resilience Framework published in 2022 (updated in 2023). The Government promised the strategy would be published in spring 2025, following a resilience review, and will ‘set out the government’s vision for a stronger and more resilient UK’. The resilience review would consider how the Government should mobilise the whole UK system to better understand, detect, prevent, plan for, and respond to whole-system civil emergencies. This should ensure the Government has the proper resources and structures to implement any strategy effectively. Currently, there are two units in the Cabinet Office to ensure this: the Resilience Directorate and the COBR Unit.
Another document to be published by spring 2025 would be a substantial refresh of the Government’s risk-agnostic framework for how it collectively responds to crises, namely the Central Government Concept of Operations for Emergency Response and Recovery (HMG CONOPS). Establishing and building the skills needed to respond effectively across the UK would be through the UK Resilience Academy (UKRA), which will be launched in April; and the Crisis Management Excellence Programme (CMEP), which is already operating. While the review and strategy can be expected to offer more detail on the nature of a whole-system and whole-of-society approach, the outlines have been sketchy so far. When one considers that the people involved should include the public and private sectors as well as the wider civil society i.e. the voluntary, community, and charity sectors, trade unions, religious and ethnic groups, health and educational establishments, uniformed and civil reserves, transport and logistic providers, etc, then the task of bringing all together in a co-ordinated way is immense. This is another reason to think beyond the Cabinet Office, LGDs and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) in delivery.
Inquiry recommendation 10
The inquiry recommended that the Government should ‘create a statutory independent body for whole-system, civil-emergency preparedness and resilience’. This body could provide independent, strategic advice on planning and preparedness. It could ‘consult with the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector at a national and local level and directors of public health on the protection of vulnerable people in whole-system civil emergencies’.
The Government’s response was largely positive but it did not propose to introduce an independent body beyond those entities already in existence. It believed that it now has ‘greater access to strategic expert advice and challenge’ while recognising ‘the need to go further, to ensure the system benefits from fresh thinking and new perspectives’. It planned to draw on independent expertise to provide challenge and undertake reviews but within existing structures. There is a clear role for business here as well.
An example of what an independent body could look like was provided by a former government minister in his evidence to the inquiry. He proposed that an independent National Resilience Institute (broadly based on the model of the Climate Change Committee) could be established through a National Resilience Act (based on the Climate Change Act 2008). He believed an Act would confer lasting impetus for a qualified and quantified response by governments of whatever political hue, with the institute (around 35 staff) reporting to Parliament rather than ministers to counteract the tendency of short-term political interference and to create some effective mechanism outside Whitehall and therefore outside ministerial control.
It is a shame that this idea has not been taken up. If the proposed Resilience Steering Board is to take on the mantle suggested by the inquiry, it needs to have greater independence and a membership that truly reflects the whole of society.
Progressive steps
We seem to be staggering into the future with our resilience concept. There is a myriad of organizations in the resilience space, both public and private, but even finding a common definition is a challenge. There are clearly some welcome moves on the horizon given the impetus provided by the Covid-19 and Grenfell inquiries. Another major disaster should not be needed to boost momentum. Moreover, with a ‘pre-war world’ in play there should be every imperative to improve the UK’s resilience, not by incremental steps but by a bold vision and holistic actions. Hopefully, the upcoming national resilience strategy will unlock the door.
The author
Robert Hall is cofounder and former Executive Director of Resilience First. He is the author of Building Resilient Futures (ISBN: 9781035812622, Austin Macauley, 2023). His next book, The Resilience Mindset: A Philosophical Journey, will appear in the spring.
