UK 'Be Ready' Campaign: What the Government Asks Households to Do

Quick answer: On 22 October 2026, the UK government launched Be Ready, a three-year campaign asking households to be able to manage for 3 days if power, water, phones or the internet are disrupted. The checklist asks for 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, food that needs no cooking or fridge, a torch, an FM radio, a power bank, cash, medicines and copies of documents. You don’t need to buy it all at once. The campaign replaces and rebrands the government’s Prepare website, launched in 2024.

Britain has long been one of the quieter countries in Europe on household preparedness. That has changed over the past two years. The government now has a dedicated advice site, a national campaign and a phone alert system, and it has been testing all three.

The tone is deliberately calm. When the first website launched, the then Deputy Prime Minister said the aim was “sensible safeguards”, not stockpiling.

How UK emergency advice has developed since 2024

2024: the Prepare website

On 22 May 2024, at the London Defence Conference, the government announced a new GOV.UK website with practical advice for households, based on the National Risk Register. It lived at GOV.UK/Prepare. In the same speech, the government said only 15% of households had an emergency kit.

2025: a plan, a survey and a pandemic exercise

8 July 2025: the government published the UK Government Resilience Action Plan. It committed to expand GOV.UK/Prepare with household advice, and the government later said it was designing a national public campaign around it.
Survey: the first annual UK public survey of risk and preparedness, carried out in spring 2025, found only 13% of people felt their household was largely or totally prepared for an emergency. Just 10% had agreed meeting points with family or friends.
7 September 2025: a second national test of the Emergency Alerts system was scheduled for 3pm, after the first in April 2023.
Autumn 2025: Exercise Pegasus, which the government describes as the largest national pandemic exercise in UK history, took place between September and November.

2026: real alerts, a progress report and Be Ready

8 January 2026: during severe storms, the Cabinet Office sent two Emergency Alerts to about 500,000 people in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
14 July 2026: the government published a progress report on the Resilience Action Plan. It promised new household advice backed by a multi-year campaign, and a national home defence exercise for officials in 2027.
22 October 2026: the Cabinet Office launched Be Ready. GOV.UK/Prepare was rebranded, and the old Prepare address now redirects to the Be Ready site. The government says more than 500 organisations have signed up to share the campaign.

The government notes that its three-day advice is in line with what France, Ireland and the Netherlands tell their residents.

What Be Ready asks households to do

The official checklist covers nine areas. Here is a summary in plain English.

Area	What the checklist suggests
Water	Bottled water for 3 days: 3 litres per person per day for drinking, and more for cooking and washing
Food	Non-perishable food for 3 days that needs no fridge or cooking, such as tinned fish, meat or vegetables, dried fruit and nuts. Choose food you normally eat
Hygiene	Hand sanitiser, wet wipes, hygiene and bathroom products
Light and warmth	Torch with spare batteries; blankets, sleeping bags and warm clothes
Communication	FM radio (battery or wind-up) and a charged power bank
Money and documents	Cash in a mix of coins and notes, plus cards; copies of ID and important papers; written phone numbers and a medication list
Medical	First aid kit, essential medicines and medical supplies
Babies	Ready-to-feed formula (you may not be able to boil water), nappies and wipes
Pets	Pet food and bottled water

For a household of four, the water line works out at 36 litres (about 9.5 US gallons) of drinking water for three days, before cooking and washing. Our guide to how much water to store explains how to store it.

Plan, not just kit

The Be Ready site also asks people to:

Write down key numbers, including the power cut line 105 (England, Scotland and Wales) or 03457 643643 (Northern Ireland).
Agree a meeting place that is easy to find and open to the public, and plan escape routes for fire and flooding.
Download and print a household emergency plan, and keep it with your important documents.
Talk to neighbours, swap contact details and think about what you could share during an outage.
Sign up to the Priority Services Register if you’re eligible. It tells energy and water companies who needs extra help, including households with children under 5.
Check your flood risk and sign up for local warnings.

Build it gradually

The checklist is clear that you don’t need to do everything at once. Check what’s already in your cupboards, add an item or two on normal shopping trips, and set a reminder every six months to check expiry dates. Our guide to stockpiling on a budget has more ideas.

Emergency Alerts: what to expect on your phone

The UK’s Emergency Alerts system sends warnings straight to phones in an area where there’s a danger to life, such as severe flooding, wildfires or extreme storms.

Your phone may make a loud, siren-like sound for about 10 seconds, even on silent, and vibrate.
Alerts work on 4G and 5G networks. You don’t need mobile data, wifi or an app.
The government doesn’t need your phone number to send one.
Phones that are switched off, in flight mode, on 2G or 3G only, or wifi-only won’t receive them.

You can opt out, but the government advises keeping alerts on. It also recognises that someone experiencing domestic abuse with a hidden phone may need to turn them off.

What this means for UK households

The good news is that Be Ready asks for very little. Most homes already have a torch, some tins and a first aid kit. The gaps for most people are likely to be water, a radio, a charged power bank and a little cash.

A sensible order of work:

Water first. It’s the hardest thing to find quickly in an outage.
Light, radio and power bank. These keep you informed and safe at night.
Medicines and documents. Order repeat prescriptions in good time; Be Ready suggests asking up to 5 working days before you need them.
Food you already eat, built up over a few weeks.
A written plan and contact list, shared with everyone at home. Our post on making a family emergency communications plan walks you through it.

The Be Ready site has local versions for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland’s Executive Office has said it will run its own “Be Ready NI” campaign.

Three days is a starting point, not a ceiling. Some European countries, such as Sweden and Norway, ask for a week. To see where your household stands, see how many days your household would last.

UK Be Ready checklist

The Be Ready site won’t carry live updates during an emergency, so in a crisis follow the instructions of the emergency services and your local authorities.

Sources & further reading

Every fact in this post was checked against the sources listed above on 1 November 2026. Advice changes: always follow your local authorities.