Why being prepared for emergencies must start in our communities

On 22 October, something I’ve been waiting 20 years for finally happened: the government launched the first stage of a national campaign to help people prepare for emergencies.

The launch of Be Ready is an important step, but preparedness cannot begin when an emergency starts. It needs to start at home, in our neighbourhoods and in the communities we are part of.

Why being prepared for emergencies matters

The first stage of Be Ready helps people take simple steps to prepare for emergencies, including providing a checklist of items to keep in the house and encouraging those who need extra support to sign up to the Priority Services Register.

Evidence from around the world shows that individuals, households and communities that are prepared will fare better if an incident happens.

If we help communities understand how they can build knowledge, confidence and resilience before emergencies occur, we can reduce the harm they may face when they do.

We do not have to look far to see the impacts of natural hazards and other threats. Heavy rainfall at the start of 2026, followed by wildfires, extreme temperatures, drought, storms throughout the year, and the fallout from cyber-attacks and incidents demonstrate why being prepared matters.

But this is not just about climate resilience, cyber resilience or the resilience of our critical national infrastructure, nor is it about scaring people about the future - it is about empowering them today.

When researching risks and resilience with communities, one of the questions I am most often asked is what people can do to influence their own outcomes.

The most important aspect is building community resilience and the resilience of individual households.

The role of communities in being ready

Government, local authorities, agencies and public services are responsible for managing emergencies, and I would never argue against that. However, evidence from around the world has shown time and again that the most successful and tangible preparedness happens at the hyperlocal level: communities looking after their own.

Responding effectively to an emergency takes national and local agencies working alongside community members. Our communities are ready for this and want to take part.

A 2026 survey of over 10,000 completed by the Cabinet Office showed that over 50% of people said they did not feel their household was prepared for an emergency.

Survey after survey reports that people in the UK would like to know how to prepare better. They want to know what works and what kind of situation they should be ready for.

However, in the same survey 61% felt capable of taking action to prepare for emergencies or disasters that might affect their local area.

There are just short of 70 million people in the UK. If we apply that ratio, then 42.1 million believe they are capable of action at local level if an emergency happens.

If we do not provide an evidence base of what has worked and how they could prepare, then we are not doing our jobs as either academics, or the government.

Turning evidence into practical action

There is evidence from a range of situations, including floods, wildfires, power outages, and water outages, showing how hyperlocal preparedness could work.

Earlier this year we worked with the National Emergencies Trust to establish what that evidence base said about how we could prepare and help each other in an emergency.

Our team reviewed more than 19,500 sources of evidence to establish what the leading practice for community groups such as schools, Men in Sheds, Park Run, gaming groups, WI groups, book groups, sports clubs, faith groups, and residents associations can do to support each other. Ready Together was launched earlier this month.

Between Ready Together and the government Be Ready campaign, this should move our UK national resilience on considerably.

Our European neighbours, as well as other countries such as Japan, Singapore, Sweden, and Norway are already having national conversations and have been engaging with their communities for a long time.

We still have a way to go, but if we can galvanise some of that local feeling of wanting to help others who we care about, then this can be a really good starting point to any of you, as readers, who want to do their bit to help their own community and themselves be prepared in case anything does ever happen in our communities.

How to prepare your household

The government website and relaunch is right to focus on national capability, but preparedness cannot begin when the emergency starts. It needs to start at community level and before any emergency happens.

Helping communities prepare together

The final point of the checklist needs resources to support it.

The Ready Together toolkit supports communities to build the relationships, plans, trusted communications and local capacity that allow them to cope effectively before professional assistance arrives and during an incident.

Communities need simple plans in place now. They need to know who may need help, where trusted information will come from, what local skills and spaces are available and how neighbours and voluntary groups will work alongside emergency services.

The toolkit enables them to:

1.Identify people likely to need additional help
2.Identify usable community buildings/meeting points
3.Map useful local skills and equipment
4.Establish trusted communications channels
5.Connect voluntary/community organisations before an incident.

National resilience requires governmental and professional capability, but it also requires resilient communities. The forthcoming strategy, along with Ready Together, should address both.

After 23 years of working in this field, the launch of this campaign is a real career highlight for me. It is particularly rewarding because we're engaging directly with communities, helping people strengthen their preparedness in ways they already recognise and value.

Rowena Hill is Professor of Resilience, Emergencies and Disaster Science at Nottingham Trent University's School of Social Sciences.

Professor Hill MBE has been an advisor on community resilience for the Sky News series, Wargame, and her work has fed into many sector and national level resilience initiatives at local and national levels.