National Resilience Strategy (2021)

Increased major shocks and disruptions, from COVID to extreme weather conditions, cybercrime, terrorism, and other dislocations, have heightened the importance of resilience for governments across the world.

In July 2021, the UK Government underlined its commitment to increase its focus on building national resilience through the publication of its 33-page ‘National Resilience Strategy’ by the Cabinet Office.

This provided an excellent opportunity for the IET to explore, with Government, how its engineering expertise could assist the delivery of a national Strategy and complement the input provided by other specialist advisors to the Government.

The proposed vision for the Strategy is to make the UK the most resilient nation. This is, in part, based on six broad themes:

• Risk and resilience
• Responsibilities and Accountability
• Partnerships
• Community
• Investment
• Resilience in an interconnected world.

In support of the Strategy, the IET’s response also included several recommendations:

• The addition of ‘sustainability’ as a broad theme within the Strategy.
• The addition of ‘manufacturing’ as the fourteenth ‘Critical National Infrastructure’ sector.
• Placing greater emphasis on those areas where the UK has world-leading expertise - data analytics, AI, and machine learning.

The IET’s response to the call for evidence was led by its cross-sector Resilience Working Group, chaired by Robin MacLaren, together with members of the Manufacturing Policy Panel.