The Government risks repeating the mistakes of the Covid-19 pandemic as it prepares for future disasters including a potential war with Russia, a resilience expert warned this week.
It comes as defence secretary Wes Streeting declared a 1,000-day ‘mission' to prepare everyone for an attack by Russia, centred on advice to stock up on essentials such as tinned food, water, torches and cash as part of the Be Ready campaign.
A senior figure in emergency planning told The MJ: ‘The Government talks about a whole-of-society approach to resilience, but its approach to developing policy too often demonstrates the opposite.
‘Some aspects of national contingency planning necessarily require confidentiality. However, earlier engagement would help build more credible and effective arrangements.'
Nick Moon, who works with councils and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) on emergency planning, said: ‘The Be Ready campaign has been in the pipeline for some time, across successive governments. More pre-launch coordination might have magnified it, but local responders have generally echoed it through their own channels, and the public have taken it on board sensibly.'
LRFs have privately warned of a lack of consultation with central government over its Be Ready campaign and on work to develop Whitehall plans to gear up for conflict, known as war books.
Feedback from LRFs in the North of England warned the Government of the need for clearer national direction, priorities and timelines, and complained about a lack of opportunity to feed local insight into national planning on home defence.
LRFs said there were ‘gaps' in planning for threats, particularly around the potential loss of utilities, critical infrastructure and cyber disruption, as well as concerns about capacity, workforce and skills.
The Government has told LRFs to review existing plans for scenarios where military support, specialist workers or infrastructure may not be available. It has urged them to prepare to operate during prolonged disruption or if multiple incidents were taking place at once, where mutual aid and national support might be affected. Whitehall said LRFs should also look at how to maintain business continuity where power, water, telecoms, IT and workforce were disrupted.
Preparations are currently underway for Exercise Albiston Shadow, billed as the largest home defence exercise for decades, in the spring, but it is expected to involve only ‘a small group of local tier partners'.
Last week the Covid-19 Inquiry was heavily critical of Exercise Cygnus, a major cross-government pandemic exercise in 2016, for failing to involve 34 of the 42 LRFs in England and Wales.
The inquiry said there was ‘no opportunity for those who delivered adult social care to act upon its recommendations' as neither the Local Government Association nor councils were shown the full findings until Whitehall was forced by legal action in 2020 to publish the report.
Whitehall has insisted its Resilience Action Plan takes a ‘whole of society' approach, including working in partnership with local government and LRFs on public engagement.
Security minister Dan Jarvis said the Government was ‘working closely' with mayors and councils ‘as we collectively seek to improve national resilience across all communities in the UK'.
