The Cabinet Office has updated the UK National Risk Register and, for the first time, included interference in the democratic process as a named national risk. The change was set out in Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones's Annual Resilience Statement to Parliament, published after another period of extreme heat and against a backdrop of faster-moving AI-enabled cyber threats. According to the government, the register is the public-facing version of the National Security Risk Assessment. Its purpose is practical rather than predictive: it gives local responders, departments, utilities and other planners a common reference point for the threats ministers judge most serious.
The government says seven new risks have been added in total. The published update highlights cyber attacks on data infrastructure, water infrastructure and police systems, and adds digital resilience failure after lessons from the CrowdStrike IT outage in July 2024. The inclusion of democratic interference is important because it brings the protection of political processes more clearly within national resilience planning, not only security policy. It follows separate government proposals announced last week for tighter checks on company donations and a cap on overseas donations. The same update removes disruption to Russian gas supplies from the register, reflecting the UK's lower reliance on that source.
Ministers have also confirmed a national public resilience campaign for later this year. Building on the existing GOV.UK Prepare guidance, the campaign is intended to encourage households to take basic steps before emergencies, with flooding, severe weather and cyber disruption cited as the main examples. The Cabinet Office says the campaign will also produce material for schools and colleges and will move the UK closer to the approach already used in several European countries. For emergency planners, the practical effect is a stronger emphasis on public preparedness, with the expectation that better-prepared households will ease pressure on frontline services during a crisis.
A second strand of the package is institutional. The government has opened a consultation on the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, with one of the most visible proposals being a formalised role for regional mayors in local and national emergencies alongside Local Resilience Forums. Ministers say the Act remains broadly fit for purpose, but the review tests whether emergency governance now needs to reflect devolution more clearly. For combined authorities and local responders, that could affect who convenes, who speaks publicly and how political leadership is connected to operational coordination when a major incident crosses council boundaries.
The Annual Resilience Statement also links civil resilience to homeland defence planning. Under the Home Defence Programme, the government says it will stage the UK's largest home defence exercise in decades in 2027, with ministers and hundreds of officials from across government and the wider public sector expected to take part in Operation ALBISTON SHADOW. The scenario will remain classified, but the exercise is intended to test readiness for hybrid attacks against the UK and will sit alongside NATO's CMX27 drill. Louise Sandher-Jones, the Minister for the Armed Forces, presented the work as part of a wider response to the threat from Russia. At the same time, classified crisis plans known inside government as the War Books are being revised for the first time since 2004, a sign that Whitehall is updating assumptions about how a modern national emergency could unfold.
Biological security remains part of the same resilience agenda. Darren Jones told Parliament that departments are on track to meet all medium-term commitments in the 2023 Biological Security Strategy by 2028, including a new Pandemic Preparedness Strategy backed by around £1 billion in health protection measures. He also pointed to a new Network of National Biosecurity Centres backed by £1.83 billion. Taken together with the risk register changes, the message from government is that resilience policy is being organised across cyber, climate, democratic integrity, defence and public health rather than in separate silos.
Professor Dame Angela McLean, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, said simple steps taken in advance can strengthen collective resilience. The National Emergencies Trust and the British Red Cross also welcomed the campaign, arguing that clear, trusted advice can help households and communities prepare earlier, especially where vulnerability is higher. For policy professionals, the immediate watchpoints are straightforward: the launch of the public campaign later this year, the government's response to the Civil Contingencies Act consultation and the operational planning that follows for the 2027 exercise. The updated register sets the direction; the next phase will show how far that direction is translated into duties, funding and local practice.