![](https://emergencyservicestimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ESS-Button-resized.png")
This week saw Resilience Minister Pat McFadden launch the UK Resilience Academy, formerly known as the Emergency Planning College. The new arrangements represent the strategic shift needed to build societal resilience and a community of trained professionals to meet the challenges of a more unpredictable world.
The risk landscape of the UK is constantly evolving, with more diverse risks than ever before. Resilience is not just an outcome or goal, it is also a mindset and emergency planning is just one of the actions that contributes towards achieving it. All emergencies that the UK may face have local impacts and we all have a part to play in improving societal resilience.
The UKRA is formed ‘up and out’ from the previous EPC supported by an extended partnership between the Cabinet Office and Serco. Using experience gained over 15 years, it is building an enhanced educational offer and professional pathways, mapped to refreshed National Occupational Standards for Resilience and Emergencies.
The launch of the UKRA represents a strategic shift with greater ambition and is far more than just a rebrand of the Emergency Planning College.
Under the governance of the Cabinet Office, the UKRA aims to act as a dynamic catalyst for building societal resilience, enhancing the training and education offer, strengthening professionalisation and fostering greater collaboration. Collaboration is at the very heart of the vision, with the goal of bringing people and organisations together to learn and share knowledge.
We are very excited about the launch of the UKRA, as it represents a significant milestone in our ongoing transformation programme. While the launch is a great opportunity to demonstrate positive change, more important than the launch itself is what we do the day after, the week after, the month after and beyond. We are making a genuine commitment to continual review and improvement.
Refreshed training offer
Our educational offer is changing as we align to the new National Occupational Standards, support professional pathways and, in time, provide a route to accreditation where appropriate and desired.
We are also refreshing how we deliver training, with new online modules enabling access to learning at a time and place of choosing, complimented by more interactive workshops benefiting from peer learning. As well as enhancing our portfolio, bespoke and exercising capabilities, we look forward to playing an increasing role in convening and facilitating discussion and debate around resilience matters, focused on strengthening societal resilience.
The UKRA also features a new Exercising Hub, to support the National Exercising Programme and encourage collaboration in exercising across organisations.
The physical campus of the UKRA will remain at the Hawkhills, in North Yorkshire, the previous home of the EPC. While this will be the heart of the UKRA, the Academy is expanding its digital and offsite presence, to work with partners both online and at other locations across the UK.
Partnership and collaboration
The Academy is not the buildings, it is the people, and I have a great team who are genuinely passionate about wanting to make a positive difference. But to have the impact we want to, we can’t do it alone, so we are looking forward to partnering with and working alongside a host of organisations with a similar mindset and intent.
The UKRA will be core to making resilience a ‘whole of society’ endeavour. Providing learning and leadership including to those working in central government departments, devolved governments, local authorities, Local Resilience Forums and partnerships, the voluntary and community sector and the private sector, while engaging more with academia as well
The aim of the UKRA will be to encourage greater societal resilience by enhancing training and skills for the resilience community. We will do this through creating a collaborative ecosystem, refreshing and building on our current learning and skills offer, and strengthening the professionalisation of resilience. The UKRA will be the hub at the centre of a network of training providers and will provide learning opportunities and events to improve the knowledge and skills of people who work together to prepare the UK for the risks it faces.
It’s all go for the UKRA with lots of change and continual adaptation, and an exciting future where the UKRA will be providing resilience practitioners with vital opportunities and tools to build upon their knowledge and experience.
For more information, visit the UK Resilience Academy.
