UK government advises strengthening food supply chain resilience to shocks

The National Audit Office has found that the government has not done enough to prepare households and businesses for food shortages, even as it warns that risks to the supply chain are becoming more likely and more severe.

Defra has expanded its Food Supply Chain Resilience team and increased its focus on planning for catastrophic events that would seriously disrupt food supply, but the watchdog concluded that the department has done too little in recent years to push households, communities and industry to prepare. Government survey data from 2025 shows how wide that gap has become: 51% of people said their household was slightly or not at all prepared for an emergency, three-quarters had encountered no preparedness advice in the previous year, and only two-thirds kept non-perishable food that would last roughly three days. Compared with several other countries, UK households are less prepared and hear less from their government about it.

Last week the Cabinet Office was reported to be preparing a campaign urging households to stock up on tinned food and bottled water, citing extreme weather and potential attacks by hostile states.

Food is one of 13 sectors the government designates as Critical National Infrastructure. Industry kept supplies moving through the pandemic and the war in Ukraine without significant state intervention, but Defra is now less confident the private sector could absorb future shocks alone, pointing to extreme weather, cyber-attacks and disease outbreaks.

The audit also found gaps in the department's own readiness. Defra lacks the legal powers it would need to direct businesses to act during a catastrophic event, and it told auditors in 2025 that it had very little confidence cross-government resilience work was sufficiently joined up. The last national scenario exercise took place in 2023 and largely excluded the food businesses that would have to deliver in a real crisis.