UK warns households and businesses to prepare for emergencies and hostile acts

The UK government has urged households and businesses to prepare for a wider range of emergencies, including natural disasters, cyber attacks and hostile acts by state actors or terrorists. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said people should think more carefully about how they would cope if essential services were disrupted. He made the remarks at the opening of the UK Gun Hall Plant in Telford, Shropshire, where production of tank gun barrels was announced to be returning to the UK.

Streeting said the public needed to be more aware of emerging risks facing the country and to make practical plans in advance. He said the government was launching a national resilience conversation to raise awareness of those risks. As part of that effort, households are being advised to stock food, bottled water and first aid supplies.

The guidance is part of a wider Be Ready campaign that encourages people to keep enough supplies to last three days. The suggested items include non-perishable food, bottled water, a torch, sleeping bags and first aid materials. The advice also recommends having a battery-powered FM radio for updates during outages and writing down the frequencies of local or national stations.

Streeting linked the warning to a range of pressures that could affect daily life, including wildfires this summer and flooding expected this winter. He also pointed to increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks on businesses and the risk of supply-chain disruption. In his remarks, he asked how the country would cope if payment systems at a local supermarket went down, saying people should be ready for everyday challenges as well as more serious threats.

Security Minister Dan Jarvis said the advice was intended to help emergency services prioritise people who need more support during crises. He said the aim was to improve resilience across the country. The government also said severe weather can affect power, water, phones and the internet, which can quickly widen the impact of an emergency.

The announcement comes as other European countries have also promoted household preparedness as part of normal life, according to the government. It follows a separate warning last month from Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle, who said people should prepare for extreme weather as a strong El Niño event develops over the Pacific Ocean. What remains unclear is how quickly the new campaign will change public behaviour, and whether businesses will adopt similar planning measures at scale.

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