“Resilience is a shared responsibility,” proclaims the UK’s new Resilience Action Plan. But shared with whom, and on what terms?
From the outset, your layman would be forgiven for struggling to make sense of the document. Glossy language, acronyms galore – there’s a lot to wade through before the pressing questions regarding implementing mechanisms for independent scrutiny or binding reform even begin to be answered.
This isn’t just a rhetorical complaint. After COVID-19 exposed the UK’s unpreparedness for crisis, the official Inquiry explicitly recommended the establishment of an independent statutory body to scrutinise resilience planning. That recommendation is sidestepped here. Instead, the Cabinet Office promises to “convene panels of experts” via the new UK Resilience Academy – panels it appoints, controls, and can ignore. Thus, whilst there’s explicit mention of “expert panels” and peer reviews, these remain government-convened and non-statutory.
Where this is salient in reference to the links to COVID-19 is that the government rejected the COVID Inquiry’s proposal for a properly independent statutory body to audit resilience readiness. No new statutory powers, duties, or funding guarantees for local responders or public services. Much of the strategy is guidance-based or consultative and thus not legally enforceable which ultimately hinders accountability.
The refusal to embed enforceable scrutiny isn’t limited to pandemic planning. It’s endemic within a state reluctant to legislate for accountability, even after repeated failures. Consider the Hillsborough Law – a flagship bill that Starmer’s government has further stalled – a long-standing demand to introduce a legal duty of candour on public authorities in the aftermath of disasters. Despite cross-party support and renewed calls following Grenfell, COVID, and the Manchester Arena bombing, the government continues to resist putting such a duty into statute. Thus, it should come as no real surprise at the lack of fully independent mechanisms being entrenched into statute to redress historical mishaps and institutional transparency with the Plan.
That’s not to say the plan is without value. For the average person, there are tangible benefits: the government’s expansion of the Emergency Alerts system has already been used to assist with flood evacuations, while the Prepare website offers basic but accessible advice on how households can build readiness for crises. Tools like the Risk Vulnerability Tool – if rolled out properly – could help emergency planners identify communities most likely to fall through the cracks in a disaster. Thus, there is a clear intention to demystify risk and widen responsibility. Yes, the government is trying to make people more aware of risks (like floods, blackouts, pandemics) and is encouraging everyone to take more responsibility. But that move only highlights the real problem: the government isn’t coupling this with legal obligations on itself to act transparently, fund preparedness, or be held accountable when things go wrong. In plain terms, they’re telling the public to be ready, but simultaneously not making themselves legally answerable when they’re not.
Ultimately, the Plan provides some useful tools and the speaks the language of reform, but stops short of structural change. It gestures toward collective responsibility without redistributing power or entrenching accountability. Thus, in a nation that has showcased its periodic tendency for crises – be it, cyber, institutionally led disaster, pandemic, we’re ultimately left with a government that can claim it planned, consulted and prepared without ever truly being held to account for its failures. In that sense, the Resilience Action Plan speaks not a transformation of state capacity, but more to a refinement of state deflection. Resilience may be a shared responsibility-but the burden, once again, is being shifted downward.
