In recent years, civil resilience has moved back up the UK’s agenda. The pandemic, fragile infrastructure, climate pressures and geopolitical shifts have pushed crisis preparedness into mainstream policy.
When the UK Government Resilience Framework was published in 2022, the then Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden told Parliament that “with the increasing volatility and interconnectedness of risks and hazards, a strong resilience system is more important than ever.”
This captures the prevailing sentiment within government towards what the 2025 Strategic Defence Review terms a “whole-of-society” approach to civil resilience. This holistic resilience extends beyond uniformed and blue-light response to include preparation, prevention, shared intelligence, local capability and the ability of institutions to withstand shocks before they become crises.
One of the main ways this is organised is through Local Resilience Forums (LRF), described by one Civil Contingencies Unit as “the principal mechanism for multi-agency cooperation in an emergency.” LRFs are the operational hubs of the UK’s civil contingencies system. They form a key element of the Cabinet Office’s guidance on Emergency Preparedness and bring together police, fire and rescue, ambulance services, local authorities, NHS bodies, utilities, transport providers and others to assess risk, test plans and keep working relationships in place for emergencies.
They are also presently at a point of review and reform by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The government’s LRF trailblazer programme is testing ways to strengthen local leadership, accountability and the integration of resilience into wider local policy. This raises a straightforward question: where are the universities in this planning?
The capability is already there
Universities have long been part of national resilience, even when the language was different.
In the wars of the twentieth century, they supported scientific mobilisation, medicine, engineering, intelligence and civil defence. This connection has become subtler, though still significant in the twenty-first century. My recent report for the Higher Education Policy Institute showed how higher education represents a composite national capability, spanning research, health, defence, logistics, skills, estates and civic coordination.
This view is echoed in recent work from Royal United Services Institute Journal, which has highlighted the continuing interdependence between universities, defence capability and national preparedness.
Today’s universities are integral parts of their places, working closely with hospitals, local authorities, employers, schools, combined authorities and voluntary organisations. They operate large estates, employ and educate substantial populations, while also providing laboratories, data capability, specialist expertise, communications networks and convening power. Together, these assets constitute a form of civic infrastructure that is already substantively embedded in how places respond to and recover from disruption.
The civic university agenda has also encouraged institutions to focus more on local and regional connections. Many universities now describe themselves as anchor institutions. Local resilience is a practical test of that claim. If universities are serious about place, then helping places prepare for shocks should be part of the work.
Yet universities are often outside the formal structures that organise local resilience. The LRFs are an example of this.
Present in practice, absent in structure
Under the Civil Contingencies Act framework, universities are not category 1 responders such as emergency services, local authorities and NHS bodies. Nor are they category 2 responders such as utilities and transport operators. Therefore they have no automatic place in the statutory architecture of local resilience.
That absence is visible. Public partner lists for LRFs in areas such as Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Lancashire, and Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland name a wide range of emergency services, local councils, NHS bodies, utilities, transport providers, faith groups, and voluntary organisations such as the Salvation Army. Universities are not listed as formal partners.
Universities are, nonetheless, active during crises. Lancaster University supported the regional Covid-19 response with accommodation, equipment, digital capability, staff and student expertise. Loughborough University research on flood nowcasting has been used through ResilienceDirect, the secure platform used by responders to share information. Across the sector, universities contributed to modelling, testing, facilities, communications and community support, each contributing in ways that few other types of organisation could.
Universities are drawn upon when useful. It is, however, an informal relationship. They are simply not designed into the system from the start. At a moment when Local Resilience Forums are themselves under review, this gap becomes harder to ignore. If the trailblazer programme is intended to strengthen local leadership and capability, it also creates an opportunity to reconsider who is included in the system in the first place.
Greater Manchester shows another way
Greater Manchester’s LRF shows a different approach to the general rule of higher education providers being only incidentally integrated into local resilience planning. The Greater Manchester Resilience Forum has worked closely with the University of Salford’s THINKlab, through the MOBILISE programme, to bring academic capability directly into resilience planning.
This partnership has produced tools and methods for risk understanding, community engagement, training and multi-agency collaboration. MOBILISE is built around three demonstrators:
- RESIDE, which supports cross-sector collaboration on local risk
- RISE, which focuses on community engagement with LRFs
- TIDE, which uses digital scenarios for training and exercises.
With climate risks increasing, in Greater Manchester these capabilities have been applied to specific risks, particularly flooding. Through the MOBILISE programme, the University of Salford has acted as a node connecting Greater Manchester LRF, Ordnance Survey, Environment Agency and Salford City Council to develop a shared platform for flood risk analysis.
The tool created brings together earth observation data, river sensor networks, real-time weather information, hazard simulation services and community inputs into a shared virtual environment that maps social, infrastructure, economic and natural vulnerabilities for defined hazards. Through this partnership, the LRF and its connected bodies have been better able to understand, predict and manage the impacts of flooding across critical infrastructure, local communities and the economy and, as a result, are more capable of mobilising to tackle floods.
That is precisely the kind of capability LRFs need. Modern risks cut across sectors. Flooding affects transport, power, health, housing, vulnerable residents and local businesses all at once. A pandemic is a health emergency, but also a workforce, education, logistics and communications emergency. Infrastructure failure quickly becomes a social problem.
The Greater Manchester example shows what happens when a university is treated as a capability partner in LRFs rather than a peripheral stakeholder. It contributes data, modelling, facilitation, scenario development, community engagement and evaluation. It brings these elements together by combining analytical expertise, convening power and leveraging institutional capacity so that disparate agencies and datasets can be integrated into a shared understanding of risk. It helps responders understand risk earlier, allowing them to build the shared intelligence on which resilience depends.
A reform moment
The UK Government Resilience Framework calls for risk understanding that is “dynamic, driven by data and insight, and informed by the best expertise.” The ambition of national policy is clear. Universities are well placed to support this.
As Local Resilience Forums are reviewed through the Trailblazer programme, there is an opportunity to reconsider who is included in the system. This doesn’t mean making universities statutory responders or adding new burdens. It means identifying a clearer route for them to participate as academic and civic capability partners by contributing to community risk registers, exercises, scenario planning and recovery. Greater Manchester shows that this can be done in a serious and practical way, while elsewhere the relationship remains uneven and informal.
The system relies on institutions it doesn’t formally include. Universities are asked to contribute – but not to belong. This creates an odd situation in which some of the most capable parts of the system are treated as if they were accidental to it. This is an issue of design rather than capability, and one that the current reform moment has the opportunity to correct.
