A cross-industry roundtable to help shape the Cabinet Office's UK Resilience Academy

The Centre for Whole of Society Resilience brought the Cabinet Office UK Resilience Academy (UKRA), and industry leaders in UK resilience together at PA's office in Victoria, to discuss the current approach being taken to develop the UKRA, and provide their opinions on the core requirements for its success. The event produced deep insights on what industry leaders believe the academy needs to offer if it is to successfully support the delivery of whole of society resilience.

Within the UK Resilience Framework published in late 2022, the UK government, led by the Cabinet Office, announced plans to develop a UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) by 2030, a central organisation to ensure those working in resilience have the right knowledge and capabilities to play their part. With the global IT outages experienced in July 2024, and the first findings of the UK COVID Inquiry, both highlighting a lack of national resilience capabilities, the need for capable resilience professionals who embrace a shift in mindset to proactive, systems-based resilience has never been more apparent.

On the 11th of July 2024, PA hosted an industry roundtable, on behalf of the Centre for Whole of Society Resilience, a transdisciplinary network, co-founded by PA’s Caroline Field. The goal of the session was to understand the current trajectory of the plan to establish the UK Resilience Academy and provide a forum for industry leaders to articulate and directly feed back to the Cabinet Office, their understanding of the common principles required for the Academy to be a success. 

The event was attended by resilience professionals, existing and potential clients from across the Cabinet Office, higher education, critical national infrastructure, transport, local government, and retail. PA has been supporting the Cabinet Office in developing and refining their approach to resilience, since prior to the publication of the UK Resilience Framework, helping them to understand the importance of systems thinking to help ‘join the dots’ and ‘break down silos’ of resilience across the UK.

Conversations on the day included the need for the UKRA to be bold, and position itself as more than just a training hub for those already working in resilience, and that any training it does provide should consider the ‘meta skills’ needed by a wider audience (e.g. systems thinking), and thus be reflective of the shift from react to prevent, and from resilience in silos to whole of society resilience.

Fiona Gaffney, who is leading on this work for the Cabinet Office shared her appreciation for the session: “Thank you so much for hosting and facilitating such an exhilarating conversation, Caroline. It was so valuable to hear others views and reminded me of what’s really important. My main takeaway was be braver, bolder and revolting!”