More Concern, Less Confidence? Reflections on the 2026 UK Risk, Resilience and Preparedness Survey

7 minute read.

A blog by Tom Watkins, Policy & Insight Lead at the Emergencies Partnership.

The headlines from the latest UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness have been published. There are plenty of interesting findings, but I'd like to avoid simply rehashing the statistics. The Cabinet Office has already done a good job of summarising the results in a clear and digestible way. I'd encourage you to take a look. 

What's more important to me is what the findings might mean for the voluntary, community and faith sector (VCFS). 

The headline story seems fairly straightforward. Public concern about emergencies continues to increase, albeit incrementally. More people are expecting emergencies to become more common over the coming decade. Across almost every risk included in the survey, people perceive greater personal impact than they did last year. That shouldn't be surprising. Over the last few years we have lived through a global pandemic, repeated extreme weather events, energy and cost of living pressures, international conflicts, increasingly visible cyber threats and growing public debate about resilience. It would be more surprising if the public concern hadn’t increased. 

However, despite growing awareness of risk, preparedness itself appears largely unchanged. More people are reporting seeing preparedness information than they did in 2025, yet fewer people who saw that information went on to act on it. Most people continue to believe that effective preparedness actions exist and that preparedness is important, but levels of confidence in their own ability to take such action has barely shifted and in some cases, has actually gone down. The proportion of the public who think they could cope for only one day or less without external help fell from almost a third last year to a quarter of respondents in 2026, and only 12% think they could cope for six days or more. 

This has to be worth taking note of. It reinforces a theme that has been coming up repeatedly across resilience work - that preparedness is fundamentally different from awareness. 

Knowing a risk exists is not the same as feeling able to do something about it. 

In a recent blog reflecting on research into Heat Health Alerts, I explored a similar issue. The challenge wasn't that people were unaware it was hot. The challenge was that many either didn't recognise the risk as relevant to them, didn't know what to do, or faced barriers to acting even when they did. This survey has even more evidence that points in the same direction. 

People increasingly 'get' that emergencies matter. They're less convinced they can do much about it. For the VCFS, I think that matters enormously. 

This year's survey formally recognised voluntary and community organisations as a preparedness communications channel in their own right. That may sound like a small methodological change, but it is significant. Government is clearly interested in understanding the role of the VCFS in building resilience. 

There is a finding tucked away in the ‘local and communities' section that deserves more attention. 

Only 19% of respondents said they know of a community group in their area that works on preparing for, responding to or recovering from emergencies. 

That was an unpleasant surprise to read, not because there is a lack of activity. Quite the opposite. 

We know that across the country, voluntary organisations, charities, faith groups and community organisations are supporting preparedness, response and recovery every day. Some do so explicitly. Others contribute through food support, community transport, welfare provision, volunteering, neighbourhood networks, social support and a range of other activities that we all rely upon to keep the cogs of society turning and become utterly invaluable when disruption occurs. 

The activity is definitely there, but the visibility appears not to be. At least not as much as we'd want it to be. So, what do we do about that? 

The survey introduced voluntary organisations, charities and community groups as a distinct source of preparedness information for the first time. 

Those results were slightly sobering too. Only 12% of those who reported seeing preparedness information recalled receiving it from the VCFS. Traditional media, government websites and social media all featured more prominently. 

We should be really careful not to over-interpret that. The survey tells us nothing about trust, influence or effectiveness. It cannot tell us whether information received from a local charity is more likely to lead to action than information received elsewhere. 

What it does tell us is that many people do not currently identify the VCFS as one of the places they CONSCIOUSLY receive preparedness information. Either way, this feels important and there's perhaps something we need to do about that too. 

Communities are holding on to some hope, and in good numbers, how do we help that to grow? 

Whilst the public may not think we are particularly well prepared, neither as a country, nor as local communities, encouragingly they still believe in each other. 

More than seven in ten people said they would be willing to volunteer to help their neighbourhood recover from an emergency if it was safe to do so. Nearly two thirds believe people in their neighbourhood would pull together during a crisis. Half said they already have somebody locally they could stay with if they needed to leave their home during an emergency. 

We spend a lot of time talking about resilience as plans, structures, systems and capabilities. Those things are all important. But one of the strongest assets any community possesses is the willingness of people to support one another when something goes wrong. 

Considering how much attention is given to the issues of community division and tension right now (and rightly so), this is an important and redeeming flip side to that story. 

The challenge is that much of this capacity and goodwill remains disconnected from organised resilience activity. 

As we’ve said, only a small proportion of respondents knew of a community group in their area working on preparedness, response or recovery. Likewise, relatively few reported being part of groups involved in this work. 

There may not be a shortage of people willing to help in an emergency. It seems, though that too many people simply don't know where to start. If we're thinking about preparedness, we need to be creating visible, accessible, meaningful routes for more people to start participating. We need to do that now so that in a crisis the capacity of willing, able volunteers is already connected and organised, with the capabilities they need. Many of the roles are there and vacant - does our sector have the collective capacity to fill and activate them and keep people engaged? 

The risks people are most concerned about are also worth noting. 

Storms remain high on the list, but the survey's newly introduced risks are perhaps more revealing. Food supply disruption, prolonged power outages, water outages and cyber-attacks affecting critical infrastructure all feature prominently. 

These are the kinds of disruptions that quickly (if not immediately) become community issues. 

Who knows and is checking on isolated neighbours? 

Who helps people access food? 

Who supports those without power, heating or communications? 

Who knows where vulnerable people might need additional help? 

These are questions that local networks are often answering long before national systems do. 

A final observation. 

Reading the findings as a whole, I personally can't shake the feeling that the public is becoming slightly less optimistic about the future risk environment. More people expect emergencies to increase. More people perceive significant impacts from a wider range of risks. Confidence that the UK is prepared appears to be slipping. Collectively respondents seem to be saying: 

"Emergencies are becoming more likely and more serious, but I'm not sure what difference my actions would make." 

Whether that reflects genuine pessimism or simply a more realistic understanding of risk is open to debate. 

Either way, it strengthens the case for a collective, whole of society resilience approach that gives people agency rather than simply information. 

If concern is increasing, our response should not be to amplify uncertainty. It should be to build confidence, practical capability and connections between people. 

The survey suggests communities already possess much of the willingness required. Concern should not be the end point. It should be the springboard we all jump on as we help people feel that resilience is something they can actively build, not something that simply happens to them.