Expert blog: First Covid-19 Public Inquiry report is an opportunity to learn lessons on managing societal wide emergencies

The report from Module 1 of the Covid-19 Public Inquiry presents the first opportunity to consider the lessons from the pandemic on the way we manage societal wide emergencies that impact across our lives in the UK.

Our work as embedded scientists for the C19 National Foresight Group (C19 NFG) included undertaking three independent reviews of how we managed the pandemic in real time (April, July and September in 2020).

The pandemic provides us with a unique perspective on how the systems operated as a whole, and how they operated before, during and after the pandemic - and other emergencies.

Disasters and emergencies present highly complex problems; they are multi-dimensional and rely on a web of connected people, strategies and organisations to work coherently together at the right time and respond in the right way and need our support.

Our research and participation in C19 NFG during the pandemic highlights the gaps in these systems and the challenges they caused to those most at risk.

Our overview of the system of disaster and emergency management (civil contingencies) can be seen in a briefing to the Senedd special purpose committee on the C19 Inquiry.

While changes have begun to be made via the Resilience Framework and Strengthening LRF pilot programme since the pandemic, we would argue there is still much further to go to ensure the systems operate in optimal ways.

We think the recommendation from module 1 should support the enhancement of civil contingencies system to ensure that:

• Those managing disasters and emergencies are at the heart of decision making (subsidiarity) and are properly supported and recognised for their tireless work.
• Those in our communities who currently live with the greatest social and health inequalities are most at risk in emergencies, and we must find ways to ensure structural inequalities are not exacerbated during times of disasters, and everyone is supported to prepare this group to increase resilience.
• We think a new approach is required from our elected leaders to engage and lead the public debate on how we prepare, respond and recover from emergencies with particular attention paid to chronic risks. We can already see that more drought, flooding, heatwaves, complex wind events (like three storms in a weekend), climate migration, changing priorities of resources as some natural resources become scarcer, all have impacts on some (or all) of our public services and infrastructure.
• That they operate within a system of accountability from the local to the national levels of managing the pandemic.

The report of module 1 is only a first step in improving our response to future pandemics. As with all public inquiries, its recommendations are not binding. We should expect a response to the report from the government, and from those public bodies to whom specific recommendations are made, within three months, with details of whether the recommendations are accepted and, if so, what the plans are for implementation.

There is no central mechanism for overseeing and monitoring the implementation of public inquiry recommendations. As a result, ongoing work will be vital for scrutinising the response to the recommendations, and for monitoring and evaluating implementation, as well as supporting improvements to operations and systems, to ensure that valuable lessons learnt by the inquiry are not lost and that we are better placed to deliver effective, coordinated responses to disasters and emergencies in the future.

Read a summary of the specific recommendations made during 2020 in response to real time reviews with those managing the pandemic. 

Professor Rowena Hill, Professor of Resilience, Emergencies and Disaster Science.
Professor Hill recently received an MBE for her work during the pandemic.

Rich Pickford, Nottingham Civic Exchange manager

Associate Professor Emma Ireton, expert in public inquiry law and procedure