Civil Defence: The Missing Lens in UK Fire & Rescue and Local Resilience Planning

For the last two decades, the organising ideas behind UK resilience have largely been civil protection and counterterrorism. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 set out a clear framework for local arrangements for civil protection, defining Category 1 responders, including Fire and Rescue Services and local authorities and the duties around risk assessment, emergency planning, business continuity and public information. Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) were created to bring these partners together to assess risks and prepare area-wide plans. 

Alongside this, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, has driven a high degree of investment, exercising and doctrine around preventing and responding to terrorist attacks, structured around Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare. 

Both of these have made the UK genuinely safer. But they also share some implicit assumptions: that crises are generally short-lived, geographically bounded, and that the wider national system (infrastructure, supply chains, unaffected neighbouring services) remains largely intact and available to support the response.

Those assumptions no longer look as safe as they once did.

If Fire and Rescue Services and LRFs are to be honest about the risk environment emerging from great-power competition, contested domains, cyber operations and the real possibility of sustained attacks on critical infrastructure, then we need to re-open a concept that has been allowed to atrophy in the UK: civil defence.

Civil protection, counter-terrorism and civil defence, what’s the difference?

It’s worth being precise in our language.

• Civil protection in the UK context is rooted in the Civil Contingencies Act and associated guidance. It is about preparing for, responding to and recovering from a wide range of emergencies; floods, industrial accidents, public health incidents, severe weather, some malicious attacks and ensuring that Category 1 responders can meet their civil protection duties. 

• Counter-terrorism is narrower in scope and sharper in focus. It is about reducing the risk from terrorism, using the CONTEST framework to prevent radicalisation, disrupt plots, protect potential targets and prepare specialist capabilities to respond to attacks. In practice, a great deal of exercising, investment and political attention has understandably followed this agenda.

• Civil defence, in contrast, is about the ability of society to function under conditions of war or sustained hostile activity, including high-end conflict, prolonged disruption to energy and supply chains, and deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. In contemporary NATO language, this is framed as civil preparedness, whose core functions are continuity of government, continuity of essential services to the population, and civil support to military operations, underpinned by seven “baseline requirements” for national resilience.

  
  

The UK Government Resilience Framework and its 2023 implementation update talk about resilience as a “whole of society” endeavour, stressing the need to withstand a broad range of civil contingency risks, malicious and non-malicious. However, the practical centre of gravity of local planning and capability development still tends to sit closer to civil protection and counter-terrorism than to the full-spectrum of civil defence.

Lessons from Covid-19: preparedness, legitimacy and civil defence

The Covid-19 pandemic has already generated a substantial body of scrutiny about the UK’s preparedness, much of it captured in the work of the Covid Inquiry. The Inquiry has been clear that, even for a health emergency that did not involve deliberate attack, Britain failed its citizens through flawed plans, weak readiness and an over-narrow view of the risks. Its early findings highlight a set of issues that are directly relevant to how we think about civil defence.

The Inquiry has underlined the need for stronger structures to coordinate and communicate between the four nations during an emergency, and for much better consideration of how decisions will affect people, both through the direct impact of the hazard and through the measures taken in response. It has recommended that expert advice in future should draw not only on clinical and epidemiological science, but also on economic, social and behavioural expertise, so that ministers understand the full implications of their choices. It has stressed the importance of clearly communicating decisions and their consequences to the public, and of ensuring that the use of emergency powers is subject to meaningful parliamentary scrutiny rather than being allowed to drift on the margins of democratic oversight.

All of these lessons land even more heavily in a civil defence context. In a prolonged crisis involving hostile action, public consent and trust will be as critical as materiel and capability. Fragmented four-nation working, opaque decision-making or poor communication would not just damage confidence; they would actively weaken national resilience. A credible civil defence posture therefore has to include robust arrangements for joint working across the UK, clear routes for integrating economic and social expertise into the centre of government, and transparent, well-explained use of emergency powers that can sustain public legitimacy over time, not just in the first days of a crisis.

The planning assumptions that no longer hold

At local level, many risk assessments and multi-agency plans, quite reasonably,  are built around scenarios such as:

• a single, major terrorist attack

• a large-scale industrial incident

• a regionally significant flood or storm

• a pandemic wave or health emergency

  
  

Even where plans recognise cascading impacts or multi-site incidents, they often still assume:

• Short or bounded timeframes – days or weeks of intense activity, followed by recovery

• Availability of mutual aid – unaffected regions able to send fire appliances, specialist teams, or NHS capacity

• Stable national infrastructure – power, telecoms, fuel and logistics networks broadly intact

• Selective targeting – critical infrastructure may be affected, but not as part of a sustained campaign

  
  

Civil defence scenarios challenge all of these. They force us to ask harder questions:

• What if multiple waves of attacks occur over months, not hours?

• What if ports, fuel terminals, data centres and power infrastructure are deliberate targets?

• What if national stockpiles and industrial capacity are themselves under strain, and resupply is slow or contested?

• What if digital networks are degraded or compromised, and analogue fall-backs are needed for prolonged periods?

  
  

These are not abstract fears; they are reflected in the kinds of threats and dependencies discussed in NATO’s work on societal resilience and in international comparisons of strong civil defence systems that stress energy self-sufficiency and secure supply chains. 

What a civil defence mindset adds for Fire & Rescue

For Fire and Rescue Services, taking civil defence seriously is not about turning firefighters into soldiers or militarising domestic emergency response. It is about being honest that future crises may look less like a single “major incident” and more like a campaign: protracted, attritional, and deliberately aimed at eroding our ability to cope. A civil defence lens asks FRS leaders to reimagine the environment in which they operate and to accept that the very platforms from which they respond may no longer be guaranteed.

In conventional civil protection planning, fire stations, control rooms, headquarters, water supplies and key depots are often treated as fixed points in an otherwise uncertain landscape, stable bases from which we deploy people and assets. Under civil defence conditions, those same locations must be understood as potential targets. This requires the design of fallback and genuinely usable dispersed control arrangements that can function under degraded conditions. It also argues for a shift towards smaller, more mobile, lower-signature assets instead of concentrating capability into a few highly capable but conspicuous nodes. Planning must assume the possible loss or degradation of key sites and avoid a reflex reliance on neighbours always being able to step in with mutual aid.

The same mindset challenges the way we think about equipment and specialist capability. High-end, high-maintenance systems will still have a place for particular risks, but in a prolonged conflict or hostile campaign, technology that depends on constant technical support, rare spare parts or unbroken digital connectivity may not be survivable at scale. Civil defence thinking therefore favours capabilities that are widely distributed across many communities rather than held only at central hubs, that are relatively low-cost so they can be scaled out instead of “gold-plated” in a few locations, and that are robust and low-maintenance enough to be stored, deployed and used with minimal ongoing support. For Fire and Rescue, that could mean simple but effective water supply and firefighting options that continue to work during power cuts or telecoms outages, basic tools for rescue, casualty care and shelter management held at community level, and containerised or modular mass-casualty, decontamination or shelter kits that can be flexibly deployed, including in austere conditions.

Civil defence scenarios also assume that “normality” may not return quickly. Fire and Rescue personnel may have to operate for extended periods with intermittent communications and partial information, making risk-critical decisions with limited access to digital systems and data. They may have to manage chronic fatigue and cumulative stress, all while working more closely than before with defence, reservists and civil volunteers in integrated arrangements. 

This has major implications for training, exercising and leadership development. It points towards a renewed focus on mission command, on improvisation, and on the ability to act effectively within a clear intent but without constant direction, themes that are increasingly prominent in contemporary resilience and civil preparedness doctrine.

Why Local Resilience Forums need to rediscover civil defence

Local Resilience Forums sit at the heart of the resilience architecture in England and Wales. They bring Category 1 and Category 2 responders together to assess risk collectively, maintain and update community risk registers, and develop multi-agency plans that give practical effect to the duties in the Civil Contingencies Act and the expectations set out in the National Resilience Standards. Within that role, LRFs are uniquely placed to reconnect local planning with a modern understanding of civil defence.

Bringing civil defence back into scope does not require abandoning the all-hazards, whole-of-society framing set out in the UK Government Resilience Framework; rather, it deepens it. It invites LRF partners to ask, explicitly and systematically, how they would ensure continuity of local democratic leadership and critical decision-making if civic buildings, digital systems and normal lines of communication were disrupted or destroyed. It asks what continuity of essential services would look like in their area if energy systems, logistics chains and healthcare capacity were under intentional pressure for months rather than days. It also raises difficult but necessary questions about how civil agencies would support military operations, for example by receiving displaced populations, helping to protect critical infrastructure, or providing emergency services to bases and key transport routes, while still meeting their obligations to the wider civilian population.

At LRF level, this line of thinking naturally leads towards a set of practical shifts in emphasis. Civil defence scenarios need to be woven into the Community Risk Register in a more concrete way than a single, generic “war” entry, using specific scenarios such as sustained infrastructure targeting, hybrid campaigns that combine cyber and physical attacks, or large-scale internal displacement. Existing arrangements can be reviewed against recognised civil preparedness baseline requirements, mapping how local systems would sustain continuity of government, essential services, energy, population movement and communication under sustained stress. 

Mutual aid assumptions need to be stress-tested, including the possibility that neighbouring LRF areas might be affected simultaneously or that national assets may be heavily committed elsewhere. Finally, relationships with defence, critical national infrastructure operators and major employers should be strengthened, recognising that energy, telecommunications, logistics and industry are all integral parts of a functioning civil defence ecosystem, not just stakeholders to be notified once an incident occurs.

From debate to action: what can be done now?

Much of this agenda may, at first glance, look like it requires new national strategies or a significant re-write of doctrine. A coherent UK-wide approach to civil defence would indeed be valuable. However, Fire and Rescue Services and Local Resilience Forums do not need to wait for that before acting. There is already considerable room within existing frameworks to begin shifting practice.

One immediate step is to ensure that the “civil defence question” is asked in every major review. When a Community Risk Management Plan is refreshed, when a Community Risk Register is updated, or when a major emergency plan is redrafted, the authors can explicitly test their assumptions through a civil defence lens, asking how the arrangements would stand up during a prolonged, hostile campaign rather than a discrete emergency. 

In parallel, at least one exercise each year can be designed around a civil defence scenario, whether as a table-top discussion or a live multi-agency activity, exploring issues such as prolonged loss of infrastructure, repeated attacks, or sustained joint working with military partners, and then capturing the capability gaps that emerge.

Investment decisions can also begin to change. As new digital systems and specialist capabilities are developed, a deliberate proportion of resources can be reserved for robust, analogue, dispersed and low-maintenance options that will continue to function when the system is under sustained strain. 

Communities can be engaged more explicitly as partners in civil defence, building on the whole-of-society approach already endorsed in national resilience policy. Voluntary organisations, community groups, businesses and faith institutions all have potential roles in preparedness, sheltering, mutual aid and public information during prolonged crises, and can be involved on that basis. At the same time, professional networks can be used to share emerging practice and stimulate debate. Institutes such as ourselves at ICPEM, alongside NFCC and other bodies, can help to ensure that civil defence is understood not as a relic of the Cold War, but as a modern, inclusive and resilience-focused discipline that adds depth to the work responders already do.

Conclusion: Civil defence as the next maturity step

Civil protection and counterterrorism will remain central pillars of the UK’s approach to resilience, and rightly so. However, on their own they are no longer sufficient for the strategic environment that is taking shape. For Fire and Rescue Services and Local Resilience Forums, rediscovering civil defence is not about nostalgia for sirens, bunkers or past crises. It is about acknowledging that some future emergencies may be longer, harsher and more deliberately targeted than current planning assumptions allow.

Designing capabilities that are dispersed, resilient and affordable enough to be genuinely widespread is essential as is ensuring that continuity of government, essential services and civil support to defence are real and exercised at local level rather than being mere aspirations confined to strategic documents.

If that can be achieved, civil defence will not displace civil protection or counterterrorism; it will complete them. The result would be a national resilience posture more honest about the risks we face and more serious about protecting the public in the most demanding conditions.