What steps he took to consider climate change tipping points when preparing the update to the National Risk Register in January 2025.
The UK is facing an ever-changing and growing set of risks. The National Risk Register focuses on the reasonable worst case ‘acute’ risks, which are discrete events requiring an emergency response and likely to occur over the next two-five years. All risks in the National Risk Register are kept under review to ensure that they are the most appropriate scenarios to inform emergency preparedness and resilience activity. Part of that process is considering the chronic, longer term risks and trends which could change the likelihood and impact of the risks set out in the Register. The January 2025 National Risk Register recognises climate change and biodiversity loss as drivers of chronic risk. For example, climate change can lead to an increase in the frequency and severity of weather conditions that cause floods and wildfires, biodiversity loss and global instability. During every update, policy makers are encouraged to consider the potential implications of these chronic risks on their policy areas, including how it might interact with acute risks. The Government published its first bespoke Chronic Risks Analysis (CRA) in July 2025 to enable the resilience community, businesses and organisations more broadly to consider these long-term challenges in their planning.