We cannot rely on the armed forces to bail us out of every emergency

2025 marked the worst on record for wildfires, with numbers for 2026 not far behind. In Suffolk, a 370-acre fire miles from the Sizewell nuclear power station resulted in hundreds of people being evacuated. Large moorland fires near Manchester raised toxic particulates in the city’s air to dangerous levels. In the last two weeks of July alone, fire services responded to over 200 separate wildfires.

As the climate changes with extremes of weather more likely, the risk of flooding has also increased. July 2021 brought severe floods across northern Europe, and flash flooding in London, with tube lines and hospitals closed and residents evacuated.

Since 1910, there have been 17 record-breaking months of rainfall, with 9 of these since 2000, and the number of people at risk potentially doubling by 2050. Fire and rescue services remain on the frontline for these incidents, with the number of calls steadily increasing.

A further growing risk to communities is the threat from hostile states to the UK’s critical national infrastructure. The government says there is the possibility of the “UK homeland coming under direct threat, potentially in a wartime scenario”.

Likely targets to disrupt life in the UK include undersea cables and energy links, telecoms networks, water supply, transport, and logistics hubs. As well as the military threat from submarines to undersea infrastructure, criminals hired online, cheap drones or cyber attacks could be used to disrupt targets on land.

From filling sandbags during floods, helping to beat down wildfires, driving ambulances and carrying out vaccinations during Covid-19, to securing the Olympics, the UK has relied on the armed forces in major emergencies at home.

The issue for communities is that attempts to disrupt infrastructure are most likely to occur if the armed forces are deployed overseas helping to defend a NATO ally, in order to impose costs on civil society and discourage the UK’s assistance. This means they would be unavailable to back up emergency services at home.

The UK is arguably underprepared for large emergencies. There are 11,000 fewer firefighters than in 2008, while £1 billion has been lost from capital resources to fire services. The government has recently stabilised the funding settlement, but fire chiefs warn of the requirement for extra investment to meet these growing risks. As yet, there are no public plans or details of who would assist the UK’s reduced emergency services to respond in major incidents if the armed forces were unable to do so, and no clear lead agency to deliver government resilience policies.

As risks to communities proliferate at the fastest pace this millennium, the UK must consider how to remodel its emergency response structures accordingly. Near neighbours in southern Europe have years of experience with wildfires and earthquakes, and maintain voluntary civil protection organisations. Volunteers are trained to provide direct support and humanitarian reception during major emergencies, such as wildfires, which are otherwise resource-intensive for regular services. The groups also have a key role in preparedness and prevention, working with communities to improve response plans to local risks.

However, the government is not developing the UK’s existing volunteer responders. St John Ambulance state the UK government is not “in any way, shape or form to the level of rigour that we need”, putting in place the right structures to collaborate with voluntary groups, while also highlighting a lack of funding to do more on resilience planning.

Fire services similarly highlight that “when our communities need humanitarian assistance… the system does not currently work”, with the government needing to do more to co-ordinate reception and shelter with voluntary groups.

Given growing, visible risks to communities, improved resilience to emergencies must be a political priority. While the government is preparing to launch a centralised information campaign on individual household preparedness to hazards, it was the efforts of residents acting with voluntary groups and the council, centred on the local village hall, which supported evacuees in Suffolk.

The government should enable community preparedness rather than emphasising individual responsibility. Instead of the armed forces, more organised volunteer responders can supplement emergency services and work with people at the local level to communicate and plan for risks.

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Robin Potter is an Academy Associate of the UK in the World Programme at Chatham House with a research focus on UK societal resilience; and a former policy adviser on critical infrastructure resilience at the Department for Transport.

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