The British government will urge households to maintain emergency supplies, revive Cold War-era planning documents and stage a major national crisis exercise amid warnings about cyberattacks, sabotage and other threats to the United Kingdom.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
British households will be encouraged to store bottled water, long-life food and essential medicines as part of a wider government effort to prepare the country for cyberattacks, infrastructure failures, severe weather and potential hostile action linked to Russia.
The public awareness campaign, expected to begin later this year, will place greater emphasis on individual and household preparedness as ministers update national emergency plans that have received limited attention since the Cold War.
The Cabinet Office said the initiative would encourage people to take practical steps to improve their ability to withstand temporary interruptions to electricity, water supplies, communications and other essential services.
The plans form part of a larger homeland defence overhaul that will include revisions to the Government War Book, a collection of emergency procedures and planning assumptions used to coordinate the state’s response during a national crisis.
The government also intends to hold a large-scale home defence exercise in 2027 involving senior civil servants, government departments, the armed forces, public agencies and civilian organizations.
Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, said the government would continue preparing for major emergencies but acknowledged that members of the public would also be expected to assume some responsibility for their own safety and that of their families.
“The government will do all it can and we are well prepared – but we can all play our part to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe,” Jones said.
“This campaign will help the public to take small but important steps to be prepared in case of emergencies and disruption – be that severe weather or a cyber-attack, which can impact access to power, water, or phone signal.”
Jones’s office is located within the Cabinet Office, which coordinates central government operations and has responsibilities involving intelligence, security and national resilience.
The Cabinet Office said the national campaign would “encourage the public to take simple steps to improve their household’s resilience.”
Officials did not provide a complete list of the recommended preparations or specify precisely how much food, water or medicine households would be advised to keep.
The government did, however, identify several types of disruption that could affect daily life, including attacks on digital systems, water infrastructure, police networks and data services.
Officials warned of the “… risk of cyber attacks on data infrastructure, water infrastructure and police systems, amid a rapid increase in the sophistication and proliferation of artificial intelligence. ‘Digital resilience failure’ is another new addition, building on lessons learnt from the Crowdstrike IT outage in July 2024.”
The reference to the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage reflects concern that a widespread technological failure, whether caused by hostile action or an accidental software problem, could interrupt transportation, communications, financial services and government operations.
The new resilience strategy is also being presented as a deterrence measure. Ministers argued that strengthening the ability of the government, military, private organizations and households to continue functioning during an attack could make Britain a less attractive target.
Louise Sandher-Jones, parliamentary under-secretary of state for the armed forces at the Ministry of Defence, identified Russia as a direct threat to the United Kingdom and said national preparations must extend beyond conventional military activity.
She described the effort as a partnership involving “the military, government departments, agencies, and the whole of society.”
“Russia is not only a threat to NATO’s eastern flank,” Sandher-Jones said. “It is a direct threat to the UK homeland and these exercises, together with important measures like updating our ‘War Books’, will help prepare us to meet that threat, as well as showing the British public how seriously we are taking it.”
The government’s use of the term “hybrid attacks” covers threats that may fall below the level of a traditional armed invasion, including cyberattacks, sabotage, interference with infrastructure and other operations intended to cause instability or weaken public confidence.
Officials said Britain must be capable of responding to incidents that affect several sectors simultaneously, particularly when disruptions to communications, electricity, water or data systems could complicate the government’s ability to coordinate emergency services.
The household preparedness campaign would also reduce the immediate pressure on government agencies during a crisis by allowing more people to meet their own basic needs for a limited period.
Families with emergency food, drinking water, medicines and other necessities would be less dependent on rapid state assistance if transportation systems were interrupted or stores, pharmacies and utilities temporarily became unavailable.
Alongside the public campaign, the Cabinet Office will update the Government War Book to reflect modern threats and revised assumptions about the country’s vulnerabilities.
The War Book system originated in an era when national planning focused heavily on conventional warfare and the possibility of a direct military attack. The updated version is expected to account for the growing dependence of public services, businesses and households on digital networks.
Those preparations will be tested in 2027 during Operation Albiston Shadow, a multi-day exercise designed to simulate a national emergency.
The exercise will require government departments, the military, senior officials, agencies and civilian organizations to coordinate their responses to a fictional crisis affecting the United Kingdom.
Jones said the operation would be the largest home defence exercise conducted in the country and would examine the government’s “current assumptions and planned response to hybrid attacks (such as a cyber attack or sabotage) on the UK, to ensure that should the worst ever happen, we will be ready.”
The planned exercise is intended to reveal weaknesses in communications, command structures, supply arrangements and cooperation among civilian and military institutions before those problems emerge during an actual emergency.
It will also test whether current plans sufficiently account for disruptions that may unfold gradually or occur through several connected incidents rather than through a single, clearly identifiable attack.
The announcement comes amid longstanding criticism that Britain lacks a sufficiently developed civil defence system.
The United Kingdom is among the few developed countries without a permanent Civil Defence establishment. The previous system was dismantled during the 1960s as part of government cost-saving measures.
Critics have argued that the absence of a dedicated civil defence organization has left the country overly dependent on improvised responses from central government departments, local authorities, emergency services and the military.
The government has also faced allegations that it failed to follow its own disaster-preparedness recommendations, deepening concerns about whether officials possess adequate stockpiles, contingency plans and operational capacity for a prolonged national disruption.
The renewed emphasis on household preparedness therefore represents both a public safety campaign and an acknowledgment that the state may not be able to provide immediate assistance to everyone during a widespread emergency.
The future of the initiative, however, may depend on political developments.
The current British government is scheduled to be replaced Monday by a new administration, creating uncertainty over whether the incoming leadership will retain the announced timetable, the proposed public campaign and the 2027 exercise.
Jones and other ministers involved in developing the plans may no longer remain in their current positions after the transition.
Defence policy is expected to be among the most disputed areas facing the next government, increasing the possibility that parts of the homeland security strategy could be revised, delayed or abandoned.
Even so, the underlying issues addressed by the proposals — cyber vulnerability, infrastructure disruption, hostile foreign activity and limited household preparedness — are unlikely to disappear with a change in government.
The planned campaign marks a significant shift toward openly telling the public that national resilience depends not only on government agencies and the military, but also on whether ordinary households can remain supplied and functional during the first stages of a crisis.
Under the emerging approach, Britons would be expected to keep enough basic provisions to endure temporary interruptions while government departments focus on protecting infrastructure, restoring essential systems and responding to the broader emergency.
The strategy reflects a wider reassessment of Britain’s ability to defend its territory and sustain civilian life during a modern crisis, decades after Cold War-era civil defence preparations were largely dismantled.
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