Government fails to tell public how to prepare for war almost a year after warning of the threat

The government has yet to issue public guidance on how to ready the whole of society for potential war, despite warning almost a year ago of the need to "actively prepare".

Discussions on homeland defence and wider national resilience and readiness are understood to be taking place behind closed doors.

But a network of local authorities and voluntary organisations that would play a key role in every part of the country should the UK ever come under armed attack appears to be largely in the dark about what they should be doing to better prepare.

Sky News has spoken to a number of experts who say that local resilience forums - the regional bodies that are responsible for supporting communities in any kind of emergency, from floods to conflict - need to become a lot more familiar with wartime planning.

Such a move though would require direction and coordination from the Cabinet Office and additional money from the Treasury.

Local government budgets are already stretched and - depending upon the level of government ambition - rebuilding the country's civil preparedness for potential conflict would require a whole new area of expertise, training and responsibility.

This is not an alien concept, however.

During the Cold War, every part of UK society - from central government to parish councils and from big business to village schools - featured in an array of plans to prepare the nation for the run-up to a war and what to do during a conflict, including a nuclear attack.

Called the Government War Book, the various measures that would need to be implemented in the transition to war - such as mobilising reserves, freeing up space in hospitals and rationing food and fuel - were well understood and regularly rehearsed.

A man called Nick Gould was briefly among the last in a breed of local government officials to receive formal training on emergency war planning when he started work in the late 1980s.

He said he was trained to be a civil defence adviser in East Sussex if ever the then Soviet Union attacked - alongside his actual civil service day job.

This kind of planning though was shelved when the Cold War ended.

Successive prime ministers calculated that the cost of maintaining structures, organisations, volunteers and supplies to endure a war of national survival was no longer justified.

Instead, emergency planning turned to civil contingencies, with a focus on natural disasters such as floods and heatwaves or unconventional threats like terrorism and cyber attacks.

Yet last June, Sir Keir Starmer's government published a national security strategy that once again raised the spectre of war on the home front.

It said: "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."

The growing threat has prompted the prime minister to talk openly about how the armed forces are returning to a war footing.

But a lot less has been said about the rest of society - many of whom would also be required to play their part if the UK were to be drawn into a large-scale war.

This could include a modern iteration of what used to be called civil defence, comprising tens of thousands of volunteers who could mobilise to support the professional fire, police and ambulance services in a crisis until it was disbanded in 1968.

Every aspect of civilian life - local councils, the emergency services, industry, public transport, schools, care homes and hospitals - would also be impacted in a war.

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A government website offers generic advice to the public on what they can do to prepare for emergencies, but the focus is still on natural hazards and accidents, not conflict.

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Mr Gould quit the public sector when the Cold War ended.

But he is attempting to put his old emergency skills to new use by organising with colleagues a two-day wargame at Bath University in July.

It is not a government event, but it will bring together officials from local authorities and the emergency services to think through what they might do if there was an attack on the UK.

"We're not talking about nuclear war or anything like that," said Mr Gould.

"We're looking at hybrid threats, so disinformation, attacks on cyber security through to drones through to conventional high explosives.

"All of that would have a severe impact upon the United Kingdom. So again, it's trying to educate and inform those organisations of what needs to be considered."

Asked about the lack of official guidance on transition to war plans, a government spokesperson said: "We've established the Home Defence Programme to rapidly build the UK's preparedness for any potential escalation to conflict.

"The Cabinet Office is driving this work forwards, in close cooperation with the Ministry of Defence and other public sector organisations, drawing on long-term plans set out in the Strategic Defence Review and National Security Strategy.

"Protecting national security is our first duty and we are constantly hardening and sharpening our approach - backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War."

(c) Sky News 2026: Government fails to tell public how to prepare for war almost a year after warning of the thr