Is there a new government emergency checklist? What it actually asks you to do

What is being shared

“New UK Government checklist urges neighbours to plan for emergencies.” “Government urging households to have emergency kit with 5 essential items.” “UK households ‘should check’ 6 things at home now and ‘swap details’.” All three ran in the last few days, and all three suggest the government has just published something.

It hasn’t. We went looking for the new checklist and there isn’t one.

Is any of it new?

The advice comes from GOV.UK Prepare, the Cabinet Office’s preparedness site, which has been live since May 2024. Its household emergency plan — a form you download and fill in — was last revised in September 2025. Nothing on the site has been added this month.

Two things explain the timing. In July the Cabinet Office said a national public-awareness campaign built on Prepare would launch later in 2026; it has not launched yet, but it has put the subject in the news. And September is “30 Days, 30 Ways”, a preparedness campaign run each September by the Emergency Planning Society, which councils and local resilience forums take part in — and which generates a steady stream of local stories.

As for “5 items” and “6 things”: those numbers are the newspapers’ own. The government does not publish a list of five or a list of six. Each outlet has picked from a longer official list and counted its selection.

What the official list actually asks for

The kit list on Prepare is short and ordinary: a battery or wind-up torch, a portable power bank, a battery or wind-up radio, spare batteries, a first aid kit, hand sanitiser and wipes, bottled water, and food that keeps and needs no cooking — plus baby supplies and pet food if you need them. For water it works from a minimum of 2.5 to 3 litres per person per day for drinking, or around 10 litres to cover cooking and washing too.

Almost all of it is a normal shop. Our emergency kit list follows the official one item by item, and the kit builder sizes it for your household.

The “things to check at home” are equally plain: know how to turn off your water, gas and electricity; test your smoke alarms; check what your home insurance covers; look up your flood risk; and sign up for flood and weather warnings.

What it says about neighbours

This is the part the headlines got right, and it is the most useful advice on the site. Prepare asks you to swap contact details with your neighbours, and suggests a messaging group for your street or building, because in a real emergency that is where news and help come from first.

It asks you to find out — tactfully — whether anyone nearby would need extra help: someone with medical needs, someone new to the area, someone who isn’t online, someone who doesn’t read English well. And it asks you to have a plan to check on them, particularly in a power cut.

None of that needs buying. It is three conversations over a fence.

The part everyone skips: writing it down

Prepare also asks you to write important phone numbers down on paper and keep them somewhere easy to find in a power cut: the power-cut line, the people you would ring, your regular medication, and your insurance policy details and numbers. Its household emergency plan is a free form for exactly that, and you can download it from GOV.UK Prepare.

Start there; it is free and it is good. If you want to go further than an emergency plan — where the stopcock and the fuse box are, which pension came from which job, what is insured with whom, who to ring first — that is what we made The Family File for: forty pages, UK-specific, that you fill in on screen or print.

Do it in twenty minutes

Find your stopcock, your fuse box and your gas shut-off, and show someone else in the house. Press the test button on your smoke alarms. Save 105 in your phone — it is the free power-cut line in England, Scotland and Wales (in Northern Ireland the number is 03457 643643). Look up your flood risk by postcode and sign up for warnings. Then knock next door and swap numbers.

That is the whole of the government’s ask. The rest — the torch, the water, the tins — can go on the next ordinary shop.