In January 2026, a new House of Lords Select Committee was established to examine one of the most pressing questions facing the UK today:

Chaired by Baroness Coussins, the National Resilience Committee has been tasked with exploring how the country anticipates, plans for, and responds to crises. Its work will run throughout 2026, reporting by November: but its implications reach far beyond Westminster, into communities across the UK.

 

• Whole-of-society resilience: Encouraging participation from all sectors, including businesses, to strengthen national resilience.
• Interconnected risks: Understanding how threats across sectors, countries, and timeframes interact.
• Strategic gaps: Identifying areas where resilience can be improved, particularly in the private sector.
• Community and workforce resilience: Highlighting the importance of resilient communities and employees in maintaining national stability.

Why this inquiry happening now? 

The creation of the committee did not happen in isolation. It follows several years of mounting concern that the UK’s approach to resilience; its ability to withstand and recover from shocks; has been tested, and in some cases found wanting.

While the pandemic was a defining moment, it was far from the only one.

Across the UK, a series of major events has exposed how vulnerable systems can be particularly at community level.

Extreme weather and flooding

Repeated storms and flooding events have had a profound impact on local areas, especially in rural and Highland communities. Storms such as Storm Desmond and Storm Babet caused widespread damage to homes, roads and infrastructure, cutting off communities for days at a time.

These events raised serious questions about:

• Flood preparedness
• Protection of critical infrastructure
• The ability of local services to cope with repeated shocks

For many communities, recovery has taken months or even years, highlighting the long-term nature of resilience, not just immediate response.

Energy system fragility

The UK’s energy resilience has also come under scrutiny. The global energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed how dependent the UK is on international markets.

Closer to home, severe weather has repeatedly caused power outages in rural areas. In parts of Scotland, storms have left communities without electricity for extended periods raising concerns about:

• Backup systems
• Support for vulnerable residents
• Communication during outages
• How long households can manage without assisitance during prolougued power outages 

These are not abstract risks they are lived experiences for many communities.

Supply chain disruption

From empty supermarket shelves to shortages of fuel and building materials, recent years have shown how fragile supply chains can be.

The 2021 fuel supply issues often linked to driver shortages saw petrol stations across the UK running dry, causing widespread disruption. While not a traditional “emergency”, it demonstrated how quickly public confidence and access to essentials can be affected. 

For remote communities, where deliveries are less frequent, these disruptions can be even more severe;  as we have experienced since the Iran crisis.

Infrastructure and transport disruption

Transport networks have also shown their vulnerability. Rail strikes, extreme weather damage, and road closures have all disrupted movement across the country.

In rural areas, where alternatives are limited, a single road closure can effectively isolate entire communities. This raises broader resilience questions about:

• Network redundancy
• Maintenance of key routes
• Emergency access
• Cyber security threats

Increasingly, resilience is not just physical but digital. Cyber attacks on public services, businesses, and infrastructure have highlighted the risks of a highly connected society.

Incidents affecting NHS systems and local authorities have shown how disruptive these attacks can be impacting everything from healthcare delivery to council services.

Climate change as a growing risk

Underlying many of these issues is the growing impact of climate change. More frequent and severe weather events are no longer seen as one-off crises, but part of a pattern of escalating risk.

This creates ongoing pressure on:

• Emergency services
• Local authorities
• Community organisations

It reinforces the need for long-term planning, not just reactive measures.

Lessons from COVID-19 and recent crises
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant weaknesses in national preparedness. The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has already highlighted concerns about how well central systems were structured to respond to a major emergency, reinforcing that resilience is as critical to national security as defence.

Beyond the pandemic, a series of overlapping challenges extreme weather, supply chain disruption, cyber risks, and global instability have underlined how modern risks are interconnected and unpredictable.

Previous warnings and unfinished work
Back in 2021, a House of Lords committee warned that the UK needed to better prepare for “extreme risks” and build a more resilient society. Subsequent government strategies and frameworks have attempted to respond, including a UK Resilience Framework and Action Plan.

However, questions remain about whether enough has changed in practice. One of the key drivers for this new inquiry is to assess whether improvements since those earlier reports: and since COVID have actually been delivered.

Growing concern about coordination and local capacity
Recent assessments have suggested that resilience planning is still fragmented and uneven, particularly when it comes to coordination between government departments and the role of local areas.

This matters because when crises hit; whether flooding, power disruption, or public health emergencies; it is often local communities and services that respond first.

What prompted the committee’s creation?
The committee itself was formally proposed in late 2025 by the House of Lords Liaison Committee, which recommended a dedicated inquiry into national resilience as one of its priority topics for 2026.

This reflects a recognition at parliamentary level that resilience is no longer a niche policy area; it is central to economic stability, public safety, and community wellbeing.

The scope of the committee is deliberately broad. It will look not only at national systems, but explicitly at the role of local resilience, acknowledging that preparedness is not just a government responsibility.

What does the inquiry hope to achieve?
At its core, the inquiry is trying to answer a simple but far-reaching question:

Is the UK ready for the risks it faces and if not, what needs to change?

A “whole of society” approach
One of the key themes emerging from the committee’s early work is the idea that resilience must involve everyone; not just government. The inquiry is examining how a “whole of society” approach can be developed, where communities, businesses, and individuals all play a role.

This is a significant shift. It recognises that resilience is not just about emergency response, but about everyday preparedness and local capacity.

Understanding modern risks
The committee is also focusing on how risks are increasingly linked across sectors and borders; for example, how a cyber incident might affect energy systems, or how global events can disrupt local supply chains.

Understanding these connections is seen as essential to improving planning and avoiding cascading failures.

Strengthening local resilience
For communities, one of the most important aspects of the inquiry is its focus on local resilience structures; how well they are funded, coordinated, and supported.

The committee is expected to examine:

Whether local resilience planning is adequate
How communities can be better supported and involved
The role of local organisations in crisis response
 

Identifying gaps and barriers
Another major aim is to identify what has been holding progress back. Early evidence points to issues such as:

• Short-term thinking
• Lack of funding
• Poor coordination
• Insufficient public engagement
   

By addressing these barriers, the committee hopes to set out practical recommendations for change.

Why this matters locally
While the inquiry is national in scope, its relevance is deeply local.

From rural communities facing extreme weather, to towns reliant on fragile infrastructure, resilience is ultimately about how well places and people can cope when things go wrong.

The committee’s emphasis on community involvement suggests a growing recognition that:

• Local knowledge is essential
• Community organisations play a critical role
• Resilience cannot be delivered from the centre alone

From lived experience to national inquiry

These are not distant or theoretical risks. They are the lived reality of communities across the UK; whether facing repeated flooding after Storm Babet, long power outages in rural areas, or the wider pressures linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

What ties these experiences together is not just the events themselves, but the questions they leave behind.

Why do the same weaknesses continue to surface?
Why are communities still left exposed to disruption that feels increasingly predictable?
And why does recovery so often depend on local effort rather than lasting structural change?

It is against this backdrop that the House of Lords has launched its inquiry into national resilience.

The formation of the committee reflects a growing recognition that resilience cannot be judged solely by plans written at national level. It must be measured by what actually happens on the ground—when roads are cut off, when power fails, and when communities are left to manage the immediate and lasting impacts.

Crucially, the inquiry is not just seeking expert opinion. It is actively asking for evidence from those with direct experience; community groups, local organisations, and individuals who have dealt first-hand with disruption and recovery.

This creates an important opportunity: for the realities faced in towns, villages and rural areas to inform how resilience is understood at a national level.

The next step in the inquiry sets out a series of questions designed to examine exactly that; how prepared the UK really is, where the gaps remain, and what needs to change.

The call for evidence closes on 20th April 2026 at 10am Submit evidence here 

 

There is no need to answer every question.

1. How far are national and international risks inter-connected, including across different sectors and across short-term and long-term risks, and what are the implications for the national approach towards preparedness and resilience?

2. What national risks could have the most severe impact in a reasonable worst-case scenario, including nuclear accidents and loss of control of satellite communications?

3. Since the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, what changes have there been to the national resilience implications of the geopolitical environment for defence spending, development of the country’s industrial base, and military recruitment?

4. What risks does the private sector face, including to cyber activity and supply chains, and how do these vary across key industries, such as finance, food, water, medicine, and transport?

5. How can a shared vision be developed to improve preparedness and resilience across the whole of society?

6. How can understanding of preparedness and resilience be improved, with action encouraged at all levels of society so that these priorities are both seen as relevant and achievable in practice?

7. How can the preparedness and resilience of civil society be strengthened, such as through funding community organisations and the inclusion of people of all ages and from all backgrounds?

8. What does the public perceive to be the biggest risks, and how can communication help to provide information about these risks, including those that are already established or materialising, and support conversations about attitudes towards preparedness and resilience?

9. What are the risks of disinformation concerning preparedness and resilience, including through digital channels and around elections, and how can these be mitigated, such as through the involvement of community organisations?

10. How should communication concerning preparedness and resilience, including the national curriculum, be targeted for particular groups, including young people aged 11-17, students, and vulnerable people?

11. What barriers have there been to implementing improvements to preparedness and resilience, such as inaction, inappropriate structures, inadequate funding, and short-term thinking?

12. What legislative measures should be considered to improve preparedness and resilience, such as a Defence Readiness Act and duties for organisations to incorporate resilience into their internal planning and business models?

13. What lessons concerning preparedness and resilience can the UK learn from other countries, including Nordic countries, and how can it facilitate international co-operation on these issues?

14. How were preparedness and resilience achieved in the past, such as during the Second World War, and what are the implications for the current environment?

 

Guidance for Submissions

Submitting written evidence: All submissions made through the written submission form should receive an on-screen confirmation once the evidence has been submitted.
Submit evidence

 

If you need help submitting your evidence, contact the National Resilience Committee:
by email at hlnationalresiliencecom@parliament.uk
by phone on 020 7219 4621 (Committee Staff) | 07745 222605 (Press Officer)