Britain has yet to issue any Cold War-style public guidance on how households should prepare for conflict, despite repeated warnings from ministers that the country must “actively prepare” for the possibility of war on home soil.
Behind closed doors, Whitehall officials are understood to be discussing homeland defence and national resilience planning, but local authorities and emergency organisations tasked with responding during a crisis reportedly remain largely unclear about what preparations they should now be making.
The concerns have raised fresh questions over whether the United Kingdom is adequately prepared for modern warfare as tensions with Russia continue to grow and NATO allies warn of rising global instability.
During the Cold War, the UK maintained extensive civil defence plans under the so-called Government War Book — a nationwide strategy detailing how the country would respond to the run-up to conflict or even to a nuclear attack.
The plans included the mobilisation of reservists, the rationing of food and fuel, the expansion of hospital capacity, and the preparation of civilian authorities for wartime conditions. Regular exercises involved everyone from the central government to parish councils and schools.
However, much of that infrastructure was dismantled after the Soviet Union’s collapse, as successive governments concluded that maintaining bunkers, volunteers and emergency supplies was no longer cost-effective.
Emergency planning instead shifted towards floods, terrorism, cyber-attacks and natural disasters.
But last year, Keir Starmer’s Government revived concerns about direct military threats in its national security strategy, warning: “For the first time in many years, we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the UK homeland coming under direct threat, potentially in a wartime scenario.”
Despite the warning, little public guidance has followed.
Experts now fear Britain’s local resilience forums — regional organisations responsible for coordinating responses to emergencies — lack both the funding and expertise required for wartime planning on a national scale.
Nick Gould, a former local government emergency planning officer trained during the final years of the Cold War, warned that Britain has lost much of the institutional knowledge needed to prepare society for conflict.
Working with colleagues at University of Bath, Gould is helping organise a two-day war game this summer to test how local authorities and emergency services would respond to a “hostile attack” on Britain.
He told Sky News the exercise would focus on modern hybrid threats including cyber attacks, drone strikes, disinformation campaigns and conventional explosives rather than nuclear war.
“All of that would have a severe impact upon the United Kingdom,” he said, warning Britain may not be prepared for multiple large-scale incidents occurring simultaneously.
The concerns come amid growing military warnings about Russia’s long-term threat to Europe.
Earlier this month British and allied troops transformed part of Charing Cross tube station into a mock underground command centre as part of a NATO war game imagining a Russian assault on the Baltic states in 2030.
The exercise envisioned a UK-led NATO headquarters rapidly deploying to defend Estonia after a Russian attack triggered the opening stages of a hypothetical Third World War.
Military planners concluded that British-led forces would need to deploy more than 5,000 drones a day to compete with battle-hardened Russian forces shaped by years of combat in Ukraine.
However, defence officials reportedly admitted the British Army currently possesses only a fraction of the required drone stockpiles and lacks industrial-scale production capacity.
Mike Elviss warned the threat from Russia could become most acute by 2030 unless Britain dramatically accelerates investment in military readiness and technology.
“There is huge opportunity here, but peril if we ignore the risk,” he said.
The Government insists work is under way to improve national preparedness through a new Home Defence Programme led by the Cabinet Office in coordination with the Ministry of Defence.
Officials say the plans are backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
But critics argue Britain still lacks anything resembling the level of civil preparedness once seen during the Cold War — despite increasingly stark warnings from ministers and military chiefs about the risks of future conflict.
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