The National Preparedness Commission’s response to the House of Lords Select Committee on National Resilience’s call for evidence in March 2026 articulates an urgent call for action and engagement.
“The UK’s risk environment has deteriorated rapidly… Resilience and preparedness need to be the fundamental organising principle of all government activity… The whole of society needs to be engaged in this.”
Yet how prepared does the public think the UK is, and how prepared are they to play their part in responding to crisis? Moreover, what challenges does the Government face in bolstering public preparedness, and what opportunities are there?
Verian sought to answer these questions through research conducted with the UK public in March 2026, and an earlier study involving publics in the UK, France, Germany and Australia in late 2025. We explored views across five types of crises that may affect the UK in the coming years: a major health crisis such as another pandemic, an environmental crisis involving flooding or extreme weather, a significant economic crisis, a physical or cyber attack resulting in major disruption to a critical infrastructure network, and a military conflict that direct affects the UK.
We were interested in how the public understands these risks, their views on investment in resilience and where any funding should come from. We also wanted to explore the potential for ‘whole-of-society’ preparedness in the face of familiar challenges such as low levels of trust in Government, social atomisation and a backdrop of exposure to misinformation.
Perceptions of risk in several of these areas are high. Almost half of people (43%) believe a military conflict such as an attack on a Nato ally is likely within the next two years. Environmental, economic and infrastructure crises are also widely seen as probable. However, people are relatively sanguine about the chances of another major health crisis – just 20% believe this is likely in the next five years.
Relatively speaking, the 2025 National Risk Register rates a health crisis as at least as likely as all the others except military. Psychological biases like the gambler’s fallacy (“it happened recently, so it won’t happen again”) and availability heuristic (“it’s in the news a lot so it must be likely”) may be reasons why public expectations are out of alignment with expert assessments of risk – but public perceptions matter when it comes to engagement.
Most people doubt the UK is ready to respond to these risks. A majority say the country is not well prepared for any of the crises tested: 65% for a military crisis, although once again there is slightly less pessimism (55%) about health events. Similar proportions have low confidence in the UK Government’s ability to respond and minimise the impact of these crises. Concern about the risks but little faith in the level of preparedness for them at a national level is a challenging backdrop for engaging people in a whole-of-society approach.
Despite scepticism about national readiness, two-thirds of people (66%) believe that citizens have a role to play as well as the Government – and Verian’s previous research shows that substantial numbers are prepared to do so. We found that three-quarters (77%) of people were willing personally to do everything possible to support the UK during a military conflict, with similar proportions for the other types of crisis. Moreover, large numbers were also confident that their fellow citizens will step up when it matters.
Understanding about what these events would involve, and what actions people should take, is a lot lower; and misinformation steps into this knowledge gap (40% had come across information about emergency events and how to prepare for them that they felt was false, misleading or suspicious). So there is a critical need for public engagement. But regardless, people recognise that they too should be prepared, and they are willing to act.
So, who should do the engaging, to leverage this public readiness? Trust is a vital element, and here the responses from the public were emphatic. Around one third say they would completely or mostly trust their employer, friends and family, traditional media outlets and the UK Government to provide information about responding to future emergency events, but it was the emergency services themselves that received by far the strongest endorsement – 63% overall. While perhaps an obvious choice given the context of the question, this does indicate the importance and appeal of information sources that are relevant and local, rather than those seen as less expert and/or more remote.
Engaging the public is a necessary step in creating national preparedness, but there is no doubt that people feel government action is needed as well. Over three-quarters think the UK should be investing more in preparing for national emergencies. There is considerable variation in opinion over where money should be spent, however. Of the five, 20% would prioritise national security and defence, but the two highest priorities are arguably more domestically focussed: protecting national infrastructure (24%) and, despite the relatively low level of risk attributed to a health crisis, the NHS to protect against health emergencies (27%).
Opinions within these areas are also divided: defence spending is favoured by far fewer of those with a degree than of those without, and many more people who are retired or aged 65+ than those who are younger. Welfare and benefits, and culture, sport and the arts, are clear priorities for cuts to find these funds, but preferences vary here too – older and right-leaning voters are much more in favour than others. All this indicates that there is work to do in persuading large numbers of people that additional public money should be prioritised for any of these risk areas, and in garnering support for decisions about where this money comes from.
The UK is at something of a crossroads. Concern about risks is high (and not wholly aligned with expert views), and belief in national preparedness is low. People know they have a part to play in creating that preparedness but are unsure what to do. They feel that investment is needed, but disagree on the destination of that investment, and the source. However, there is a foundation of willingness to step up when it matters and a belief that others will do likewise, coupled with high levels of trust in local and relevant sources of information.
Local engagement on the practicalities, combined with Government activity to explain the investment decisions it needs to take, may be the way to ensure that the whole of UK society is indeed engaged in creating the national resilience and preparedness that we so urgently need.