Resilience and Emergencies professionalisation through new National Occupational Standards

Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, climate events and emergency incidents such as Grenfell, the government are committed to assessing and understanding what systems need to be in place to effectively mitigate, understand, plan and prepare for emergencies. This work is the ongoing evolution of public services, building on resilience efforts in the UK year-by-year.

It has been identified that we need to take a whole-of-society approach to resilience, expanding the civil contingencies banner – with the aim of establishing a consistent level of civil protection across the UK. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 sets out a number of duties for organisations preparing, planning and responding to emergencies or adverse events – but what skills do people need in order to carry these duties out, and how do we keep them up-to-date in light of a changing risk landscape?

The first port of call in response to the above was to launch a review of National Occupational Standards (NOS) related to civil contingencies – the building blocks of skills development in the UK. NOS are documents that describe the knowledge, skills and understanding that an individual needs to be competent in a job. They are used for a variety of purposes, notably for the development of job roles and service design, and for setting the content and learning objectives of training and qualifications.

The Workforce Development Trust (parent group of Skills for Justice) supported the Cabinet Office by reviewing 17 National Occupational Standards within the Civil Contingencies Suite. We were tasked with gathering feedback and input from a wide range of stakeholders to reflect the whole-of-society approach. To meet the needs of the government we:

• Ran a public consultation for stakeholders to feedback on whether the standards were fit for purpose.
• Ran a series of webinar sessions to explain what the National Occupational Standards are, how they are used, and how attendees could respond to the consultation.
• Carried out a comprehensive communications campaign to reach organisations from private and public organisations across all four nations.
• Analysed and compiled recommendations from over 375 consultation responses, from 30+ sectors.
• Set up two expert working groups, who were tasked with reflecting the recommendations and producing updated standards.
• Used our expertise as a standard setting organisation to put the updated NOS through a rigorous approval process, including seeking sign off from all four nations.

Reflecting the broadening application of resilience efforts, the suite title was updated to Resilience and Emergencies National Occupational Standards. The new standards were approved in April 2025 and promoted as part of the UK Resilience Academy launch.

The standards will now support initiatives to professionalise resilience, embedding sustainable skills development through policy, enabling multi-agency coordination, and progressing the workforce’s capabilities.

You can see all the updated standards on the Workforce Development Trust NOS Finder tool, and access resources and toolkits built to help organisations use them as part of HR and learning and development process.

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