ARE YOU PREPARED FOR A NATIONAL EMERGENCY? NEW GOVERNMENT GUIDANCE AIMS TO SHOW YOU HOW TO GET AHEAD
Defence may be top of mind for many at the moment, certainly if you are a UK politician or even just reading a national newspaper. With both Labour and the Conservatives vying to be the party most trusted to keep the nation safe and secure, it is not surprising that both parties have been engaged in discussions about defence spending, the nuclear deterrent, the size of the army, national service and much more.
Yet these conversations go so much deeper than the normal pre-election grandstanding. We live in an age of polycrisis, where assorted crises around the globe compound to create an environment that is becoming increasingly dangerous.
The year 2020 has ushered in a decade of new realities, risks and threats including a global pandemic, war in Ukraine and Gaza, threats from non-state terrorist organisations and technical advances in weaponry and communications, all set against a background of climate change, natural disasters, financial shocks and escalating geopolitical tensions. Across the pond, we may even be witnessing the unravelling of the foundations of democracy.
Increasing security, and building resilience against global threats and shocks, should be a high priority activity for nations and organisations alike.
The UK’s new Resilience Framework
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak anticipates that “more will change in the next five years than in the last thirty” and that the UK will face both great danger and great transformation during this period. It must be right, then, that since Covid, the UK government has taken active steps to increase its resilience, build its capacity to counter global threats and to prepare for the next crises in what is intended to be “the biggest transformation in Britain’s national resilience planning in decades.”
In the last 18 months the government has established a new Resilience Framework which focuses on the UK’s ability to anticipate, assess, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from known, unknown, direct, indirect and emerging civil contingency risks. Its remit is to build resilience to risks that have a domestic source and those that have their roots overseas (but which would impact the UK).
A new Resilience Directorate constantly scans the horizon for future threats. It is responsible for preparedness and risk reduction and the Cabinet Office Briefing (COBR) Unit, which is responsible for crisis response. It is also responsible for creating a culture of resilience across Whitehall, developing critical cross-cutting capabilities and ensuring that connections between government departments are seamless. This reorganisation means the UK Government is able to coordinate and support emergencies while continuing to deliver long-term capability building and risk reduction.
The updated 2023 National Risk Register reflects the principles of the Resilience Framework to communicate risk information in a more open and accessible way, to ensure shared understanding of and greater preparedness for risks. It is aimed at risk and resilience practitioners, including businesses and voluntary and community sector organisations.
Increasing resilience to emergencies at local level…..
Although the UK Government has an important role to play in assessing and planning for risks, effectiveness at local level is critical to the UK’s resilience overall. The 38 Local Resilience Forums in England, the four Local Resilience Forums in Wales, three Regional Resilience Partnerships in Scotland and Emergency Preparedness Groups in Northern Ireland play a critical role in bringing local responders, such as the emergency services, together to plan for risks. Local resilience partners produce Community Risk Registers, which focus on the highest priority risks in each local area.
….And at individual level
Because resilience is a ‘whole of society’ endeavour, individuals must be empowered to make a contribution in a coherent, focused way. In an emergency or disaster situation, every person counts.
The Prepare Campaign, launched by Oliver Letwin (the deputy Prime Minister) at the London Defence Conference on 22 May, is a new government initiative that aims to empower individuals and communities in becoming better prepared for, and more resilient to, disasters and emergencies.
As Mr Dowden remarked: “The one thing that Covid made clear and remains clear is that crises can hit us all in ways that we might not be able to anticipate. Resilience requires us all to be ready.”
Prepare encourages people to learn more about the risks in their area; to sign up for alerts and warnings; make an emergency plan such as working out the best escape routes from their home if there is fire or flood; conduct home fire safety checks; know how to turn off gas, electricity and water; stock up with emergency supplies; and how to cope with trauma. The guidance also suggests that households should prepare an emergency kit to keep at home which might include:
A battery or wind-up torch
A portable power bank for charging your mobile phone
A battery or wind-up radio to get updates during a power cut
Spare batteries
A first aid kit including waterproof plasters, bandages, a thermometer, antiseptic, eyewash solution, sterile dressings and gloves, medical tape for dressings, and tweezers
Hand sanitiser and wet wipes
Bottled water: between 3-10 litres per person per day
Non-perishable food that doesn’t need cooking, such as ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables and food for pets
Baby supplies such as nappies and baby formula
Whatever the nature of the emergency (which could range from flooding to cyber-attack to power outage to infectious disease), you should aim to be self-sufficient for three days (at least). Unfortunately this contrasts with polling data collected by Focaldata for the London Defence Conference, which revealed that over 40% of people do not have three days’ supplies of non-perishable food and water and just 15% have an emergency supply kit in their homes.
According to Mr Dowden: “Every additional person that takes steps to make themselves resilient means that when a crisis hits, the government can focus more on the people that aren’t ready and aren’t resilient.”
“We are working ahead of time to equip the whole of society to prepare for and even prevent the next shock while delivering a clear and robust plan that is so vital to our national defences. The new measures I have set out today give us yet more tools in our armoury.”
More information is available on the Prepare website.