Introduction
On January 16, 2025 the Government published its response to Module 1 of the Covid-19 Inquiry, outlining its stance on the Inquiry’s 10 recommendations, as well as the 2025 update of the National Risk Register (NRR). While there are signs of continued progress, key opportunities for meaningful reform remain – which we hope will be considered as part of the ongoing resilience review and be taken up in the forthcoming resilience strategy.
We published our thoughts on the Inquiry last year, and below we do the same for the Government’s response and the latest NRR.
The recommendations we wish to highlight fall broadly into five categories: risk governance, risk ownership, scrutiny, risk assessment, and exercising.
Risk Governance
Recommendation 1: Simplified structure for civil emergency preparedness
The Inquiry recognised unnecessary bureaucracy within the structures responsible for resilience and preparedness. In December 2022, the UK Government established the National Security Council Resilience sub-committee, a Steering Board of senior officials and the Resilience Directorate, providing cross-cutting leadership and preparedness coordination. This represented a significant step towards fulfilling this recommendation. However, the continuing absence of a senior government Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) limits progress. A CRO would provide unified leadership, help cut through silos and oversee the management of whole-system risks more effectively. We’d continue to recommend the National Security Adviser (NSA) be retitled to National Resilience and Security Adviser (NRSA), and a specialist externally-hired CRO be brought in at DNSA level.
Recommendation 2: Cabinet Office leadership for whole-system civil emergencies
The Cabinet Office seems to have largely avoided a leadership role, instead acting as a support function for the current Lead Government Department (LGD) structure which will remain in place. We concur with the Inquiry that the LGD structure can be problematic, entrenching a siloed approach which is difficult to oversee.
HMG proposes transferring ownership from the relevant LGD to the Cabinet Office in the event of a catastrophic crisis, following a decision made at the Prime Minister’s discretion. The issues here are twofold. Firstly, the retention of the LGD model continues to overlook the increasingly complex nature of the risks we face. Most cross-cutting, whole-system risks are catastrophic and we should not expect these risk events to occur in line with the neatly siloed LGD system. Secondly, it is disappointing to see HMG insist on a system that allows the possibility of a period of uncertainty, followed by a transfer of risk ownership (likely involving a reassignment of roles and responsibilities) during catastrophic events. Even with plans outlining triggers and thresholds for centralised response, this “handover” approach inevitably introduces vulnerabilities: unclear accountability, delays, gaps in mitigation, loss of critical information, and conflicting departmental approaches.
Rather than leaving room for uncertainty, we advocate a risk-agnostic, Cabinet Office-led framework—proposed by the Inquiry— which would streamline responses and deliver better outcomes. Such a framework should cover both acute and chronic risks rather than simply those catastrophic risks which appear in the NSRA.
Risk Ownership
Recommendation 4: UK-wide strategy for civil emergencies
It is encouraging to see HMG confirm the publication of a forthcoming resilience strategy which will deliver its vision for a more resilient UK as well as risk-specific operational plans which reflect a possible leadership role for the Cabinet Office in whole-system emergencies, delivered by spring 2025. However, HMG rejects a unified UK-wide strategy to sub-recommendation level, suggesting it would be unwieldy and citing devolution arrangements, responsibilities and accountabilities.
This is in danger of missing the mark. We suggest that the introduction of a senior government CRO would provide a point person to spearhead UK-wide resilience enhancement and assume responsibility for leading the Resilience Directorate and national security teams working on risk planning. This new role would bring balance and challenge to entrenched assumptions reflective of groupthink across government, cross-cutting oversight, as well as simpler and clearer accountability of the sort encouraged by the Inquiry. At the same time it allows both departments and devolved governments to retain risk ownership.
Additionally, we continue to recommend the establishment of more specialist central ownership coordination units in the Cabinet Office for complex risks along the lines of the existing biosecurity coordination unit. This would create a more cross-cutting, agile and integrated approach to preparedness for these risks and overcome departmental silos.
Scrutiny
Recommendation 9: Red teams for external scrutiny
HMG’s commitment to advisory groups suggests a promising commitment to scrutiny and challenge and represents a real step forward. However, the introduction of ‘eight standing advisory groups of technical and scientific experts, each led by an independent chairperson’ appears unnecessarily bureaucratic, and might contradict the Inquiry’s call for simpler structures. Details on how these groups will influence policy remain vague. Clarifying information regarding their role, and how HMG will ensure the groups’ expert knowledge is able to influence policy would be helpful.
HMG recognises the importance of scientific advice in planning for and responding to a crisis, promising improvements to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – which includes external experts.
Despite the inclusion of expert opinion, both in key government policy decisions and in formulating the new National Risk Register (NRR), we feel an independent body established by statute is still essential to gain full oversight of the risk management process.
Recommendation 10: A UK-wide independent statutory body for whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience.
Despite recognising the importance of scrutiny and of this Inquiry recommendation, HMG doesn’t directly address this recommendation as yet. In our view it’s vital, and we continue to suggest that the National Preparedness Commission could – if given a clear mandate – coordinate an external expert forum as an interim step, paving the way for this reform.
Risk Assessment
Recommendation 9: Red teams for external scrutiny
HMG’s commitment to advisory groups suggests a promising commitment to scrutiny and challenge and represents a real step forward. However, the introduction of ‘eight standing advisory groups of technical and scientific experts, each led by an independent chairperson’ appears unnecessarily bureaucratic, and might contradict the Inquiry’s call for simpler structures. Details on how these groups will influence policy remain vague. Clarifying information regarding their role, and how HMG will ensure the groups’ expert knowledge is able to influence policy would be helpful.
HMG recognises the importance of scientific advice in planning for and responding to a crisis, promising improvements to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – which includes external experts.
Despite the inclusion of expert opinion, both in key government policy decisions and in formulating the new National Risk Register (NRR), we feel an independent body established by statute is still essential to gain full oversight of the risk management process.
Recommendation 10: A UK-wide independent statutory body for whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience.
Despite recognising the importance of scrutiny and of this Inquiry recommendation, HMG doesn’t directly address this recommendation as yet. In our view it’s vital, and we continue to suggest that the National Preparedness Commission could – if given a clear mandate – coordinate an external expert forum as an interim step, paving the way for this reform.
Exercising
Recommendation 6: Regular pandemic response exercises
We are delighted to see plans for a Tier 1 exercise later in 2025 in line with our previous recommendations (see our National Risk Register Response (point 8) and Implementation Update Response point 3 under ‘Further development’), and are hopeful that the information available following this will lead to further progress in enhancing resilience.
Recommendation 7: Publication of findings and lessons from civil emergency exercises.
HMG’s 12-month timeline for publishing exercise findings seems overly long. The Inquiry’s proposed three-month window would ensure lessons are applied promptly, avoiding the preparedness delays and omissions exposed during the Covid-19 crisis.
This has been challenged by HMG, which argues that the complexity of a Tier 1 exercise makes a twelve-month timeline more realistic. Alarmingly, this extended timeframe means that if an exercise had been conducted in early 2019, it would have provided no actionable preparedness by the time the Covid pandemic began. This highlights a critical issue: learning from such exercises must be timely to have meaningful impact. We strongly advocate for shorter feedback loops to ensure that insights can be applied swiftly and effectively.
Recommendation 8: Published reports on whole-system civil emergency preparedness and resilience
The government’s acknowledgement of the importance of transparency in communicating risks to the public and private sectors and to the public at large is a promising step forward in addressing whole-system civil emergencies. The release of the 2025 NRR marks an exciting development in this effort. However, the document’s intended audience remains unclear, and its advice is overly abstract—making it less likely to inspire tangible action. Additionally, the focus appears to lean too heavily towards immediate impacts rather than to building long-term resilience.
We recommend the government make greater use of its Prepare website as a central hub for resilience-related advice. Key information from the NRR—such as guidance on preparation, mitigations, in-crisis actions, and recovery—could be incorporated into the website. This would help position Prepare as the go-to resource for individuals, organisations, and communities seeking practical, actionable advice on building resilience.
Conclusion
Looking forwards to the resilience review and a resilience strategy:
It is important that HMG sets out a vision for what a resilient UK should look like and makes resilience a national priority. Encouraging improvements have been made, but the reluctance to embrace further structural reform thus far could undermine this. A re-titled NSA and a senior government CRO would signal the crucial importance of resilience and provide unified leadership and a single point of accountability for the government’s risk management process – something that was sorely lacking ahead of the pandemic. More cross-cutting risk ownership coordination units in Cabinet Office would provide leadership on catastrophic risk preparation across multiple departmental risk owners. An independent statutory body would provide external challenge to the government’s risk management process. All should receive consideration in the ongoing resilience review and feature in the forthcoming resilience strategy.
It is unfortunate that the results of our recent Polling show there is only one risk event we tested where respondents were more likely to say they would have some idea of what to do in response – a global pandemic (63%). As we await the findings of the ongoing review, we must hope that this can be addressed and we can become stronger and more resilient as a society, as households and as individuals without having to live through another crisis. We call for a recommitment to the sort of increased transparency we see in the more recent NRRs as part of this. Our recent polling reveals 77% of respondents believe the government must inform them of risks, even if individuals can do little about them. If preparation and resilience to risk is partly an individual’s responsibility, which resources like ‘Prepare’ suggest is the case, HMG should equip us all with broader knowledge of the threats we face, both acute and chronic, and prevention and mitigation measures being taken against them.
CLTR commends the steps taken thus far on enhancing preparedness. We look forward to supporting further progress towards the ‘agile system’ mentioned in the Minister’s Foreword which is required to achieve a more resilient UK.
