The new government’s plans set out in the Queen’s Speech include a couple of welcome developments that match asks in the Resilience First election manifesto. The first of these is the commitment to publishing a national infrastructure strategy backed up by £100bn of investments. These will include progressing HS2, the Midlands Rail Hub and Northern Powerhouse Rail.
The government strategy should go a long way towards meeting our plea for a more holistic and joined-up approach to building national resilience, as recommended in the National Infrastructure Commission’s scoping study on the UKs national infrastructure.
The government has also proposed much needed changes to the housing planning legislation to improve fire safety following the first phase of the Grenfell Tower report.
However, we are disappointed not to see anything that addresses several of our other asks. These include our proposal to move away from an outdated historical trend analysis methodology to contingency planning towards an approach that better accommodates the possibility of unexpected events.
With the transition to a low-carbon economy and the decentralisation of power generation, we also want to see the government invest in the resilience of communities so that they are better prepared to respond to power interruptions, including actions to recover from a total or partial shutdown of the transmission system.
We will continue to lobby the new government on all our asks in pursuit of our ambition to build a more resilient and therefore safer and more prosperous UK.
#JointheDebate @ResilienceFirst
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