The UK Government’s Resilience Action Plan (14 July 2025) is, on its surface, presented as a forward-looking strategy to strengthen national preparedness. Yet a close reading reveals something far more serious: for the first time in modern British history, the government has formally prepared for the possibility of a National Power Outage (NPO) — a complete collapse of the electricity system across the entire United Kingdom. Nowhere in the public debate has this been properly acknowledged. But inside the government’s own text, the NPO emerges as a realistic scenario requiring the same level of central mobilisation once reserved for pandemics, major biological incidents, or wartime emergencies.[1][2]
The government does not frame this as a distant or abstract risk. The internal logic of the document shows they treat a nationwide blackout as a foreseeable event that could overwhelm every department simultaneously. In the scenario they describe, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) would not have the capacity to handle the crisis alone. Control would have to shift to the Cabinet Office, because the systems responsible for maintaining electricity supply are now too fragile, too fragmented, and too dependent on interlocking infrastructure to manage their own collapse.
This is a profound admission:
The UK’s electricity grid is no longer resilient enough for its own lead department to manage a full-system failure.[3]The seriousness of this shift is further underscored by the emergency communications measures the government quietly sets out. In the event of an NPO, the public would be instructed , via the Emergency Alerts system , to switch on BBC Radio 2 or Radio 4 for further information.
This is not merely a stylistic choice or a nod to historical broadcasting tradition. It reflects an expectation that mobile networks, internet services, and data infrastructure will fail quickly during a national blackout.
The Resilience Action Plan treats this as an operational assumption, acknowledging the likely collapse of digital communications within hours of a grid failure. The return of analogue radio as the backbone of national crisis messaging is one of the most revealing decisions in the entire document and underscores the government’s lack of confidence in the resilience of the digital systems that underpin modern life.[3]
Throughout the plan, the language used to describe the UK’s energy and infrastructure landscape is unusually frank. The government acknowledges years of underinvestment in the electricity grid,[4] significant vulnerabilities in critical national infrastructure (CNI) that were poorly understood until recently,[5] and the increasing frequency of serious incidents such as the North Hyde substation fire that forced Heathrow Airport to shut down in March 2025.[6]
The point is repeated:
The UK’s essential services are deeply interdependent, and the electricity system is the single point of failure that connects them all. A shock to the grid is a shock to the country. This is amplified by the rise in cyber threats targeting energy, telecoms, and data systems , a risk category the plan notes is expanding rapidly.[7]
Taken together, the document makes clear that Britain’s electricity network can no longer be assumed to be stable, predictable, or secure.
Perhaps the most damning passages appear in the sections where government reflects on what went wrong over the past decade. It admits that “data systems were fragmented,” that departments “misunderstood risks,” and that critical infrastructure vulnerabilities were, until recently, “inadequately mapped.”[9][10][11] These admissions reveal a systemic failure of governance.
For years, Whitehall did not possess a clear understanding of how infrastructure sectors depended on each other, how a single failure could cascade across the system, or how weakened local resilience could leave millions vulnerable during a prolonged crisis. The government further concedes that Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) the organisations responsible for frontline crisis response , suffered from chronic underfunding and a lack of sustained investment.[12]
The Civil Contingencies Act, the core legal framework for emergency management, is described as outdated and in need of overhaul.[13] These weaknesses were not uncovered by chance; they surfaced because real-world events and system stresses have forced the government to confront the fragility of the infrastructure it oversees.
The structure of the NPO scenario described in the Action Plan makes clear that recovery from a full-system blackout would be slow, complex, and potentially prolonged. The government anticipates a multi-departmental struggle to maintain essential services while NESO attempts a national Black Start, a process that is already technically challenging under ideal circumstances, and increasingly difficult in a system dominated by non-synchronous renewable generation and extended HVDC networks.
The plan implies that restoration could take days or longer, as local authorities attempt to manage severe disruptions with limited resources, minimal redundancy, and inadequate emergency power capabilities.[14][15][17]
Government communications during the crisis would need to be continuous and repeated, signalling a recognition that public confidence, clarity, and basic information could break down quickly.[16]
The underlying message is unmistakable: the UK is not prepared for a fast recovery from a nationwide grid collapse.This assessment is reinforced by the government’s quiet shift towards promoting public self-reliance. The Resilience Action Plan states openly that during major disruptions, “authorities may not be able to reach everyone who needs support in the first few hours or days.”[19] This statement alone represents a remarkable departure from the traditional assumption that emergency services and local government will be available to assist the public in real time. It signals a recognition that national systems may simply be unable to cope with the scale of demand during a multi-sector outage.
The GOV.UK/Prepare campaign is therefore being expanded to instruct households to maintain supplies, to build local support networks, and to prepare for extended periods without power or government assistance.
This represents the closest the government has come to acknowledging that the resilience of the national grid and the wider infrastructure system ,can no longer be taken for granted.Although the Resilience Action Plan avoids direct criticism of the UK’s energy transition, the structural implications are clear. The grid is carrying an unprecedented burden:
Rapid electrification, unstable renewable inputs, congested substations, delayed upgrades, short-duration batteries, the forced introduction of complex AC/DC architecture, and rising demand from electric vehicles, heat pumps, and AI data centres. All of this is taking place while long-duration storage remains unavailable, nuclear capacity continues to decline, and synchronous generation is being retired faster than alternatives can replace it.
This is the context in which the government is now preparing for a National Power Outage:
A system under stress, lacking redundancy, and increasingly dependent on technologies that complicate rather than stabilise national recovery.Taken together.
The Resilience Action Plan reads less like a statement of strategic confidence and more like a controlled admission that the UK has built an electricity system that cannot withstand a major shock.
The document acknowledges inadequate governance structures, years of underinvestment, deep cross-sector vulnerabilities, and an energy grid strained to breaking point.
It outlines emergency measures that implicitly assume the collapse of mobile networks, internet services, digital infrastructure, and essential public services. It concedes that local authorities lack the capacity to manage widespread outages and that recovery would require centralised control, extended emergency broadcasting, and public self-sufficiency.For the first time, the government has acknowledged the possibility of a systemic national failure.
The question now is not whether the risk exists , their own document confirms it .
But why such an enormous admission has been made only quietly, and why the public has not been told the full story. A National Power Outage is no longer an abstract scenario buried in civil contingency manuals. It is a risk the government is actively preparing for, because they know the system as it stands today is fragile, overstretched, and dangerously exposed.–
Footnotes
[1] Resilience Action Plan, Foreword, 2025.[2] Whole-of-System Crises definition.
[3] National Power Outage case study.
[4] Introduction, paras 5–10.
[5] CNI Knowledge Base.
[6] North Hyde Substation incident.
[7] Cyber Resilience Index.
[8] CNI interdependencies section.
[9] Objective 3: System weaknesses.
[10] Ibid.[11] Objective 2: CNI mapping.
[12] LRF funding section
[13] Civil Contingencies Act Review.
[14] NPO response roles.
[15] Cabinet Office duties.
[16] Emergency communications plan.
[17] NESO restoration role.
[18] Local capability failures.
[19] GOV.UK/Prepare guidance expansion.
SAY NO TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR LAND 
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