The new UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) was launched on 28 April 2025. Here, Robert Hall builds on a previous article, Prospects for the new UK Resilience Academy; and looks at the aims of the UKRA.
Creating a new organization out of an old one presents both opportunities and dangers. On the upside, like a phoenix arising from the ashes, it offers hope of fresh insights and innovative solutions unencumbered by previous restraints. On the downside, like teaching an old dog new tricks, it can be challenging to remove embedded traits and may be a drag to potential advances. Transformation is rarely easy.
The new UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) was launched on 28 April after a long gestation, the release of some pre-launch documents and a low-key media build up. The final announcement is welcomed. This will be all the more so if the result is more phoenix than canine, accepting that evolutionary progress is likely to win in officialdom. The government minister responsible describes the academy as a ‘generational upgrade’ to crisis training. The fact that the academy is built out of the existing Emergency Planning College (EPC), with the same physical campus and managed by the same external contractor is, perhaps, telling.
The UKRA aims to train more than 4,000 people each year, working in both public services and the private sector, to better deal with crises. Skills to be taught will include help for businesses to maintain continuity in the event of a disaster, as well as crowd management skills and crisis communications. The Armed Forces and Civil Service will also be offered the training which will aim to make sure the UK is better prepared in the event of something like the Covid-19 pandemic. There are plans to hold one major exercise in 2025, involving all government departments, local councils, and emergency services, with the devolved authorities invited to take part.
A protracted history
Mention of an academy stems from the then Government’s response in 2022 to a House of Lords report on Preparing for Extreme Risks: Building a Resilient Society. The response stated that it ‘intends to propose, in the Resilience Strategy, the establishment of a UK Resilience Academy to establish competence standards and learning pathways in crisis management and resilience building’. Although the notion of a strategy was dropped, the academy was confirmed when the UK Government Resilience Framework was published in December 2022.
In the Government’s response to the Covid-19 inquiry (Module 1, Recommendation 4), it promised that a resilience 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 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 that the Government has the proper resources and structures to implement any strategy effectively.
The need for a strategy
Talk of a review and strategy is also welcomed. Details might have been expected ahead of the UK Resilience Academy launch as it would put that new organization into context. They may still materialise this spring under what has been called a ‘Plan for Change’. A clear and full strategy could be considered essential if the EPC and other elements of national resilience are to hold water. The Resilience Framework failed to do this. A National Audit Office report on government resilience (albeit addressing extreme weather) highlighted key shortfalls to be addressed. It stated that the framework: ‘does not set out a well-defined vision for what a resilient UK looks like, including targets and standards for the desired level of national, local or sectoral resilience.’ … ‘Without these, government cannot make informed decisions about trade-offs between long- and short-term priorities, investment or funding allocation of priority areas. It also makes it difficult for government or other stakeholders to track progress and evaluate how effectively and efficiently government is using public funds to improve national resilience.’ These are serious defects and echo earlier and similar comments from evidence given to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.
To be fair, the UKRA’s Organisational Resilience Guidance does offer some elements of what could be expected in a strategy listing such items as guiding principles, practices and cultural attributes. Yet, this ‘guidance’ does not address a whole-of-society approach to resilience by including, for instance, the private sector in its target audience.
An example of a strategy that offers meaningful direction is the EU’s European Preparedness Union Strategy, which was issued following the important Niinistö Report on Preparedness and Readiness of the EU. The strategy includes 30 key actions and a detailed ‘Action Plan’ to advance the Preparedness Union’s objectives, as well as developing a ‘preparedness by design culture’ across all EU policies.
The report concluded that strengthening Europe’s civilian and military preparedness and readiness to address today’s growing security was a matter of urgency. The report called for a profound change of mindset, and a shift in the way we understand and prioritise preparedness across the European Union. Key objectives and actions of the strategy were: Protecting Europe’s Essential Societal Functions, Promoting Population Preparedness, Enhancing Crisis Response Coordination, Strengthening Civil-Military Cooperation, Bolstering Foresight and Anticipation Capabilities, Increasing Public-Private Cooperation, and Enhancing Cooperation with External Partners. This looks like the key ingredients of a resilience strategy, if not in every respect.
Total defence
The new UK Resilience Academy would do well to look at how other countries approach their training regarding resilience and security. The two topics are closely aligned in terms of ensuring the public are safe and can both survive and thrive. The concept of total defence is common across Nordic-Baltic countries, albeit interpreted slightly differently by each nation.
President Stubb of Finland, for example, told an audience last year about Finland’s national defence courses which have been offered four times a year for the last 60 years, bringing together diverse groups of professionals from across Finnish society. In three weeks, these groups receive a crash course on Finland’s comprehensive security system, which fosters a widespread understanding of how the system works and ‘engraves a sense of duty in people’.
Other European countries are also stepping up a gear. A new law in Poland will allow Poles, including school children, to go through organized self-defence and first-aid courses, starting this year. It also calls for improving Poland’s public warning systems and increasing the number and quality of emergency shelters in the coming years. Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said recently that the city will invest some 117 million zlotys ($30 million) into upgrading existing shelters and adapting other sites for the purpose, as well as providing training for residents.
As a training organization the UKRA may be able to do only so much but the strategy / concept within which it operates will be crucial for success. As resilience and total defence, taken together, denote a wider conceptualisation of security, the notion of a shared culture will help to capture both the breadth of total defence and the social dynamic at the broader community level. Societal resilience (including good social justice and a strong educational system) has been shown to allow communities to recover from disruption faster than those less privileged.
Whole of society
While the idea of a whole-of-society or whole-system resilience approach is lauded by Government, and will no doubt be part of the UK Resilience Academy’s syllabus, there is justifiable concern about its practical viability. In a systematic review published by the EU Commission, the conclusion was that: ‘Terms like ‘whole-of-government’, policymaking ‘integration’, and ‘policy coherence’ describe what governments require’. The report continues: ‘However, there is a large gap between requirement and reality. Policymaking is too fragmented to produce fully integrated policymaking and coherent policies. Whole-of-government approaches are vague and rarely translated into concrete action.’
As the EU report goes on: ‘Approaches are difficult to track and perspectives are difficult to reconcile. Most studies restate the importance of integrated action without defining it well, describing how to do it, addressing trade-offs, or evaluating progress. Research is not well integrated and the result is not coherent.’ Hence, it would be beneficial if the new UKRA could help identify ways in which all interested parties could respond.
The ultimate arbiter will be the Government’s commitment to resourcing and organizing from the centre for a whole-of-society response. Until a holistic strategy appears, the UKRA should be seen as a step in the right direction to achieve better practical training and greater awareness for multiple sectors.
The author
Robert Hall is cofounder of Resilience First Ltd and author of Building Resilient Futures. A sequel, The Resilience Mindset – A Philosophical Journey – will be published by Austin Macauley on 20 June.
