The government's new Prepare campaign: what it actually says

You’ll have seen the headlines. Households told to stockpile. Britain braces. That sort of thing.

The reality is duller and much more useful, so here it is without the drama.

What has actually been announced

On 14 July, in the Annual Statement on National Resilience, the government confirmed it will run a national resilience public awareness campaign, launching later in 2026. It will be anchored in the existing GOV.UK Prepare service and supported over several years, including resources for schools and colleges.

Note the tense. At the time of writing this had been announced rather than launched, and the detailed campaign materials hadn’t yet been published. Much of the press coverage has run ahead of what’s actually available.

The important thing most of the coverage misses: the guidance already exists and has done since 2024. It has been sitting quietly on gov.uk being sensible while almost nobody visited it. The campaign is about getting people to read it, not about new instructions.

What the guidance actually recommends

Here is the substance, which is remarkably ordinary:

• A battery-powered or wind-up torch, because torches are safer than candles
• A battery-powered or wind-up radio
• A portable power bank for your phone
• Spare batteries
• First aid supplies
• Bottled water
• Non-perishable food that doesn’t need cooking
• Important phone numbers written down on paper
• Knowing how to turn off your gas, electricity and water

On water, the guidance points to a minimum of 2.5 to 3 litres per person per day for survival, and notes that around 10 litres per person per day would also cover basic cooking and hygiene.

That’s it. No bunker. No year of rations. A torch, a radio, some water and some tins.

Why now?

Three things sit behind it.

Severe weather and flooding, which is the risk most UK households will actually meet. Storms, power cuts, burst mains, floods.

Cyber and infrastructure failure. The National Risk Register was updated in July with several new entries, including cyber attacks on data, water and police infrastructure, and a category covering digital resilience failure, drawing on lessons from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage.

State-based threats. The campaign also covers information about hostile state activity, and a fair amount of the press coverage has focused there.

We’re going to stay out of the politics of that last one. What we’d point out is that the practical response to all three is identical. A torch works the same whether the power is off because of a storm, a fault or something else entirely. You do not need to have a view on geopolitics to own a wind-up radio.

The numbers that make the case

The government’s own 2026 survey of public risk perception and preparedness found that a quarter of respondents could meet their household’s needs for one day or less if a power cut also cut off gas and water.

That has improved. The equivalent figure in 2025 was closer to a third. But it still means a very large number of British households would be in trouble by the second morning.

Only around one in five had put together a grab bag.

If you’re reading this and thinking you’d be in that first group, you are in extremely normal company, and it takes an afternoon to fix.

What we’d add to the official list

The guidance is deliberately generic, because it has to cover every household in the country. Ours doesn’t, so:

• A manual tin opener. Genuinely the most commonly forgotten item. An electric one is decoration during a power cut.
• Quantities. The guidance won’t tell you how much, because it can’t. A family of four needs about 36 litres of drinking water for three days. Work out yours rather than guessing.
• Something for the children to do. Three days with no screens and no plan is a long time.
• Pets. They need water and food in the total too, and if you keep fish or reptiles, they depend on the mains to stay alive.

Please don’t panic buy

Nobody in government is saying anything is about to happen. The framing throughout has been about being able to cope for a few days if services are disrupted, not about an imminent emergency.

Panic buying is also actively unhelpful, because it empties shelves for people who need them today. Add a few items to your normal weekly shop over the next couple of months and you’ll get to the same place without contributing to a shortage or spending a lot at once.

What to do this week

If you do nothing else:

1. Check you have a working torch per person. Buy a wind-up one if not.
2. Put a few days of no-cook food in the cupboard, with a manual tin opener.
3. Store drinking water, worked out for your household size.
4. Write your key numbers on paper, including 105 to report a power cut in England, Scotland and Wales.
5. Find out how to turn off your gas, electricity and water, and show everyone else in the house.
6. Charge a power bank.

Then stop. That’s a complete response to everything in the announcement, and you’re allowed to be finished.