The annual resilience statement: what progress matters most for a whole-of-society approach?

Today’s annual resilience statement to Parliament offers an important opportunity to take stock of the UK’s progress on resilience. From the perspective of the Centre for Whole of Society Resilience, the key question is not simply what activity has been announced, but whether the UK is becoming better at building resilience as a genuinely whole-of-society capability. 

That means resilience that is not confined to central government or emergency planning structures, but is shared across households, communities, civil society, businesses, local systems and national institutions. It means connecting policy to practice, and ensuring that resilience is not only planned for, but also understood, measured and enabled across society. 

The government’s latest statement and implementation report suggest a positive direction of travel. The Resilience Action Plan continues to be organised around three core objectives: to continuously assess how resilient the UK is, to enable the whole of society to take action, and to strengthen the public sector resilience system. Several elements of this year’s statement are particularly relevant to the Centre’s work.

Measuring resilience more meaningfully 

One of the most important developments is the growing focus on how resilience is actually measured. 

For too long, national readiness has often been judged through partial proxies: the existence of plans, the speed of response, or assessments of capability after a crisis has already occurred. What has been missing is a clearer, more consolidated picture of how resilient the UK is before shocks happen. 

That is why the government’s emphasis on continuously assessing resilience is so important. If resilience is to be improved strategically, it must be measured in a way that captures the relationship between individual and household preparedness, community and local capacity, and wider national and systemic factors. Without that, it is difficult to know where vulnerability sits, where investment is most needed, and whether policy is improving resilience over time. 

This is an area of particular importance to the Centre. Caroline Field has been leading the Cabinet Office working group on measuring whole-of-society resilience, and as an Affiliate of the UK Resilience Academy, the Centre welcomes the collaborative work now under way to strengthen standards, capability and learning across the system. The implementation report also highlights the UK Resilience Academy’s role in revising and expanding National Occupational Standards, alongside work to update the National Resilience Standards for Local Resilience Forums later this year. 

The opportunity now is to ensure that this work remains genuinely whole-system in nature. A resilience baseline must not become a narrow technical exercise. It should illuminate not only institutional readiness, but also local networks, public confidence, social and economic vulnerability, and the community conditions that shape resilience in practice. 

Public preparedness is becoming more visible 

A second encouraging area of progress is the stronger emphasis on public preparedness. 

The annual statement confirms plans for a multi-year public information campaign to support new household advice on preparing for disruption and emergencies, focused on simple steps people can take to improve their resilience. The implementation report adds that this campaign is being developed in collaboration with civil society organisations, will include resources for schools, colleges, and children and young people, and will sit alongside further development of GOV.UK/Prepare. 

This matters because a whole-of-society approach depends on resilience being something people can understand and act on in everyday life. Preparedness cannot remain the preserve of specialists. 

This also connects directly to the Centre’s wider perspective. Ruth Crick’s research highlights a vital principle: people only change their behaviour when change is meaningful to them. That insight is highly relevant to resilience. If preparedness is framed only in abstract or technical terms, it is unlikely to generate action. Resilience needs to connect with what people value in everyday life: safety, continuity, wellbeing, fairness and belonging. 

The implementation report itself recognises that building whole-of-society resilience requires a “profound cultural and behavioural change” informed by robust social and behavioural science evidence. That is an important acknowledgement. The next step is to ensure that public communication on resilience is not only clear, but also meaningful and achievable for people in very different circumstances. 

Cross-system exercising and preparedness are strengthening 

The annual statement and implementation report also point to significant progress in exercising and preparedness. 

Most notably, the government reports that it has delivered Exercise PEGASUS, described as the largest national pandemic scenario exercise in UK history. Across its core exercise days, PEGASUS brought together UK government departments, devolved governments, arm’s-length bodies and Local Resilience Forums, while also engaging businesses, voluntary, community and faith sector organisations, academics and other external stakeholders. The annual statement similarly highlights PEGASUS as the largest Tier 1 pandemic exercise in UK history. 

This matters because resilience is not built only through plans and frameworks. It is also built through rehearsal, relationships and the ability to work across boundaries under pressure. Exercises that include not only government but also wider society are much more consistent with a whole-of-society model of resilience. 

The same is true of the Home Defence Programme, which the statement says includes revitalisation of the government warbooks, accelerated departmental planning and an intention to deliver a Tier 1 national exercise on Home Defence in 2027. The implementation report presents this as closer integration across government, industry and society, embedding resilience and a whole-of-society approach.

Leadership capability remains essential 

If resilience is to be shared across society, leadership capability matters just as much as structures. 

A resilient system depends on people who can work across organisational boundaries, navigate uncertainty, build trust and lead collaboratively through adversity and change. Those are not secondary qualities; they are central to whether systems adapt effectively when facing disruption. 

This is why the Centre places such emphasis on leadership development. The Centre’s Resilient Leaders Programme reflects the kind of support that is needed more widely across the system: helping resilience professionals lead proactively and collaboratively rather than simply react to events. If resilience is to become embedded across institutions and places, leadership development needs to sit alongside technical capability, standards and doctrine. 

The growing role of the UK Resilience Academy, including its contribution to standards and capability-building, is therefore welcome. The next phase should go further in recognising that whole-of-society resilience requires leadership at every level: national, regional, local, organisational and community. 

Communities need scaffolding, not just recognition 

For the Centre, one of the most important tests of a whole-of-society approach is whether communities and civil society are being properly enabled to contribute. 

The implementation report contains several encouraging signs. It highlights work to strengthen partnership working with the voluntary, community and faith sector, including guidance developed collaboratively with VCFS organisations, and a Civil Society Resilience Infrastructure Fund of up to £2.5 million to support civil society infrastructure in England. It also notes the introduction of five Chief Resilience Officers as part of the Stronger LRF Trailblazer programme. 

These developments matter because community resilience does not happen by rhetoric alone. It needs what we often describe as scaffolding: coordination, convening, information-sharing, trusted relationships and practical empowerment. 

This is where Chief Resilience Officers in Local Resilience Forums can play a particularly important role. Done well, they can provide the scaffolding that allows communities to contribute effectively, linking local capability and local knowledge with formal planning and response arrangements. That is essential if resilience is to be built with communities, not simply for them. 

A positive direction — with implementation now the test 

Overall, this year’s annual resilience statement points to a resilience agenda that is becoming more systemic, more evidence-led and more open to whole-of-society thinking. The updated National Risk Register, published with accompanying guidance to make it more user-friendly and to situate it in local context, is another example of this wider shift. 

From the perspective of the Centre for Whole of Society Resilience, the most meaningful progress is progress that helps connect the dots: 

• between measurement and action 

• between leadership and delivery 

• between risk information and public meaning 

• between community capability and formal coordination 

The next phase is now about implementation. Resilience will not be built by statements alone. It will be built when evidence shapes decisions, when leadership is developed at every level, when communities are properly enabled to act, and when resilience becomes meaningful in the lives of the people it is intended to protect. 

That is the test of a truly whole-of-society approach.