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The government has today published its response to the COVID-19 Inquiry Module 1 Report.

Commenting on behalf of the Academy, Paul Taylor CBE FREng, Royal Academy of Engineering Trustee, said: "COVID 19 brought unprecedented tragedy and disruption, and severely tested our national capabilities to respond to an emergency of this scale. Module One of the COVID-19 Inquiry highlighted the strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK, and the shortcomings in preparedness planning.

"In 2021 the Royal Academy of Engineering was commissioned by the Cabinet Office to undertake an external review of the 2019 National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) methodology, setting out 13 recommendations for greater resilience. We are pleased to see the progress that the government has made in implementing the recommendations from the Module One report, and those also identified in our review.

"The transition to a dynamic risk assessment methodology with a wider range of scenarios, greater use of data and more diverse external challenge reflect best practices in the engineering discipline. The separation of chronic and acute risk assessment is an important change, but the interaction between these assessments remains crucial. We welcome the government’s appetite for evaluating the impact of changes it has made through the Resilience Review, and we particularly welcome the prioritisation of vulnerable people.

"We will continue to support the government to pilot further improvements to risk assessment methodology, and as they pilot an alternative approach to risk assessment that considers preparedness for risks. The focus on preparedness will help drive action to make the UK a safer, more resilient nation for everyone."

For more information please contact Jane Sutton

Jane Sutton
+44 207 766 0636

Notes for editors

  1. In 2021, the Royal Academy of Engineering was commissioned by the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat to undertake an external review of the 2019 National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) methodology.
  2. The NSRA is a classified assessment of the risks that could cause a national-scale emergency in the UK and informs plans to mitigate those risks. A publicly available version, the National Risk Register, provides information on the most significant risks that could occur in the next two years, and is used to inform the public, businesses and communities.
  3. The NSRA explores risks by using scenarios: significant but plausible manifestations of a given risk. Scenarios can be used to judge impact, and the scale of impact informs proportionate planning. Our review builds on engineering best practice for the design of scenarios, exploring the interdependencies between different risks, and how to build resilience thinking across an organisation.
  4. The latest version of the National Risk Register was published in 2023 following changes to the National Security Risk Assessment methodology.
  5. A public version of the Academy’s review is available here: https://raeng.org.uk/policy-and-resources/engineering-policy/security-and-resilience/nsra