Triennial Pandemic Exercises

4.1 The Welsh Government has long-recognised training and exercising as an essential component of effective emergency planning and major incident response. We agree that regularly programmed pandemic preparedness exercises should be tested, without de-prioritising other catastrophic risks which also need to be tested.

4.2 We, alongside the other governments of the UK accept that catastrophic risks should be tested at national and local levels through response exercises across all of the UK’s catastrophic risks through a National Exercise Programme that establishes annual Tier 1 exercises.

4.3 Currently, planning is underway for a cross-system, UK Tier 1 national level pandemic exercise to take place in Autumn 2025, with the high-level aim to “assess significant elements of the UK’s preparedness, capabilities, and response arrangements in the context of a pandemic arising from a novel infectious disease”.

4.4 The Welsh Government is fully engaging with this Tier 1 exercise and engaging with partners from the other nations on planning alongside our local responders. We are establishing a Wales Coordination Group to oversee planning and participation in Wales, which will have representation from all key organisations involved in the exercise. This will also include the third sector to ensure the exercise considers how a broad range of vulnerable people will be helped in the event of a pandemic.

4.5 We also recognise that regular exercising at a Wales and local level will remains a core component of our preparedness work alongside the Tier 1 exercises. This will include desk top exercises to support and test our preparedness plans across identified risks. Since the pandemic, Public Health Wales has led on two desk top exercises. The first was in March 2023 to test the revised communicable disease outbreak control plan and the more recent was focused on High Consequence Infectious Disease arrangements as part of the Mpox preparedness work.

4.6 Where appropriate, as a further future step, we are considering the use of powers conferred on the Welsh Ministers in 2018 to make clear ministers’ expectations in relation to exercising; for example by issuing statutory guidance and whether regulations would be appropriate, especially where this will enhance the legal clarity for the emergency responder community.

The Scottish Government accepts this recommendation in principle. We accept the need for participation in regular UK-wide exercises to test our preparedness and response to civil emergencies, with the aim of providing results applicable across a range of scenarios, including pandemics. We are committed to participating in the Tier 1 National Exercising Programme, which seeks to exercise responses to a range of risks.

Emergencies can take a variety of forms from pandemics to severe weather to national power outages. Emergencies can also be unpredictable; therefore, it is crucial to be prepared for a range of emergencies including those that are unlikely or have never occurred. By exercising for a wide range of emergencies, we gain a vast knowledge base of what works during an emergency and where the gaps are. Often the consequences of different emergencies can be similar and therefore, we can apply learning from exercises to a wide range of emergencies, not just the one being exercised. This allows us to gather evidence on the effects of a wide range of scenarios and the impacts that these can have on our country and people, particularly vulnerable people.

The Scottish Government is working with the UK Government and the other devolved governments on national exercising. Planning is progressing on a Tier 1 pandemic exercise and is likely to take place in autumn 2025. The aim of this exercise is to ‘assess significant elements of the UK’s preparedness, capabilities and response arrangements in the context of a pandemic arising from a novel infectious disease.’ We commit to providing a further update in July 2025 once further planning discussions have taken place.

The involvement of relevant voluntary and community sector organisations is important in this regard and helps towards ensuring that government is informed regarding the needs of individuals during emergencies and as a result, enables us to take mitigating actions prior to emergencies occurring.

The Scottish Government is committed to involving the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in all aspects of resilience planning, including involvement in relevant exercising. We would therefore agree that any UK-wide pandemic response exercise, agreed upon, should involve a broad range of organisations including relevant VCS organisations in Scotland.

We accept this recommendation and recognise the need for exercising and learning. As such, work has commenced on preparation for a Tier 1 Exercise (Exercise PEGASUS) on a 4-Nation basis. Northern Ireland participation is led by the DoH, with input from TEO and other NI departments as required.

Exercise PEGASUS will be held in Autumn 2025 with the high-level aim to “assess significant elements of our preparedness, capabilities, and response arrangements in the context of a pandemic arising from a novel infectious disease.”

DoH, as the Lead Government Department, will provide oversight and TEO will lead on the cross-government input for NI. Planning for this exercise will include the identification and assessment of any sub-objectives that NI may seek to achieve as part of the overall exercise.

These exercises will require coordination across the 4-Nations and will include relevant devolved governments, voluntary and community organisations and Blue Light organisations.

Active consideration is being given to departments providing input to planning and participation in this exercise.

We recognise that these exercises must consider how a broad range of vulnerable people will be impacted in the event of a pandemic.

A learning and development strategic approach was endorsed by CCG(NI) at its November 2022 meeting. This builds on the long-standing concept of training and exercising of plans and operational responses but adds a new dynamic of individual and system-wide learning and development with the aim of enhancing competencies and moving eventually to accreditation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for cross-government pandemic disease preparedness to be maintained, developed or initiated including but not limited to pandemic influenza. Therefore, a 4-Nations Pandemic Disease Capabilities Board (PDCB) was established in July 2021 and meets regularly.

While the DoH is at the forefront in planning for the management of the health effects of a pandemic in NI, building resilience and ensuring preparedness requires a coordinated approach across all NI departments and agencies, as amply demonstrated by the Covid-19 response which involved all departments.

A Cross-Departmental Pandemic Resilience Programme Board has been established to provide strategic direction and a coordination and governance function for the programme. The new Cross-Departmental Pandemic Resilience Programme Board led jointly by the DoH and TEO will deliver a programme of work to build resilience and better prepare NI for the challenges of the next pandemic.

This will mirror and feed into a similar ‘UK Pandemic Disease Capabilities Board’ chaired jointly by the DHSC and Cabinet Office, on which all UK government departments and devolved governments are represented (DoH and TEO attend for NI).

The government agrees that regularly programmed exercises should test pandemic preparedness. A ministerial, national level (Tier 1) exercise has been programmed for 2025 to test the response to a major pandemic. In addition, smaller scale exercises, including testing the pandemic response and other catastrophic risks, will be tested across government through the National Exercising Programme and existing departmental exercising programmes. It is important to balance the regularity of testing pandemic preparedness against the need to conduct Tier 1 exercises on other whole-system risks.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for the delivery of the National Exercise Programme (NEP), which covers a range of whole-system risks, with the priority areas for testing informed by cross-cutting and systemic vulnerabilities and capability gaps. The NEP sets out a timetable of annual Tier 1 exercises (2024-2028), requiring a central response and cross-government coordination. Tier 1 exercises are large-scale national exercises involving devolved governments and regional/local tier responders, as well as relevant industry engagement such as key businesses, voluntary and community organisations. Government departments fully participate at senior official or ministerial level.

In 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care will lead on the Tier 1 exercise testing the response to a major pandemic. The aim is to “assess significant elements of the UK’s preparedness, capabilities, and response arrangements in the context of a pandemic arising from a novel infectious disease”. UKHSA is leading on planning for the exercise and stakeholder engagement is underway. This complements the commitments within the 2023 UK Biological Security Strategy, to the “regular domestic and international exercising of our collective preparedness and defences to biological threats”.

The Cabinet Office has provided additional support to those involved in exercising across the system, publishing Exercising Best Practice Guidance on gov.uk, which was developed in consultation with departments, local resilience leads and resilience experts. This helps government departments, devolved governments, public sector organisations and others to plan for, resource and deliver exercises, from small scale table top exercises to large scale national exercises.

The guidance recommends that exercise planners consider and embed exercise objectives that explore the impact on vulnerable groups including those who could be disproportionately impacted. A bespoke toolkit (Exercise in a Box) has been designed and shared with Local Resilience Forums to enable them to consider the challenges and demands of identifying and supporting vulnerable persons during significant disruptive events, as part of their exercise programme.

The government recognises that there is still further work required to ensure that the impact of inequalities and vulnerabilities within pandemic decision making is fully explored. Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance (published in 2024 on gov.uk) advocates for a participatory approach to emergency management which considers the impacts of emergencies on individuals and builds community resilience. Further detail can be found in Recommendation 7.

The Scottish Government fully engaged in Exercise Pegasus, delivered between September and October 2025 across three consecutive Phases, and most recently took part in Phase Four on 16 June 2026.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting future UK-wide exercises and taking part when appropriate.

The Scottish Government has commenced a full process of review, evaluation, and debriefing to capture recommendations for both the improvement of future exercises and the response to emerging pandemics.

The UK Government and the Scottish Government have committed to publishing recommendations from Exercise Pegasus in winter 2026.

On 11 June 2026, the Scottish National Debriefing and Lessons Protocol, supported by the Scottish National Lessons Matrix, was fully launched and operational on Resilience Direct under the debriefing and lessons section. These documents were designed to standardise the approach to debriefing and manage lessons in an auditable way.

The Scottish Government wrote to the inquiry chair on 18 May 2026 to confirm that this recommendation has been delivered and closed.

Status: OPEN Introduction We continue to recognise the ongoing need for exercising and learning. Progress update The Department of Health (DoH), supported by all NI departments, remains fully engaged in Exercise Pegasus, which is a UK-wide, Tier 1, pandemic exercise and the largest pandemic simulation in UK history. The three ‘core phases’ of the exercise took place between midSeptember and early November 2025 and engaged more than 200 participants across DoH and Health Silver (SPPG, PHA, and BSO) in a simulated response. The Department’s response structures were activated, led by the Permanent Secretary and included senior policy leads. Executive Ministers were fully engaged in the ‘live’ decision-making and at COBR and Civil Contingencies Ministerial level meetings, as were senior officials.

The Welsh Government participated fully in Exercise PEGASUS, a UK-wide tier 1 pandemic preparedness exercise involving all four nations. The exercise tested Wales’ strategic and operational response across 3 live-play phases:

Phase 1: Emergence – early detection and escalation of a novel pathogen.

Phase 2: Containment – implementation of public health and social measures and coordination across agencies.

Phase 3: Mitigation – managing widespread transmission and sustaining essential services.

The Welsh Government adopted a cross-government approach to its engagement with the exercise across all 3 phases, with Cabinet Members working alongside senior officials to lead our response during the live play days. The Permanent Secretary chaired the Wales Civil Contingencies Committee meetings held after each live play day.

Key partners, including Public Health Wales, local resilience forums, local authorities and the third sector were also involved in the exercise, which will continue into 2026, with a final phase focused on recovery and long-term resilience.

Following a comprehensive evaluation process, a report on the findings and learning from Exercise PEGASUS will be published in late 2026. The Welsh Government is committed to embedding lessons identified into pandemic planning, the Wales Resilience Framework and broader emergency preparedness systems.

The government continues to agree that regularly programmed exercises should test our pandemic preparedness with a ministerial, national level exercise having taken place this year.

Exercise PEGASUS (a ‘Tier 1’ national-level exercise) was a pandemic preparedness exercise led by DHSC with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), concluding live participation on 5 November 2025. Three ‘core’ exercise days were held on 18 September, 9 and 30 October, where participants were challenged to respond across the key phases of a pandemic – emergence, containment and mitigation.

Exercise PEGASUS has been the largest simulation of a pandemic in UK history, involving every government department, the devolved governments, representation from arms-length bodies, local resilience forums, and the engagement of businesses, academics, and external stakeholders. A fourth phase, focussing on recovery is planned to take place as a tabletop exercise in summer 2026 to consider impacts of decisions taken over the course of the exercise. The UK Government has committed to communicating the findings and lessons of the exercise as recommended by the Covid-19 Inquiry and a post-exercise report aims to be delivered in winter 2026. A written ministerial statement on Exercise PEGASUS was published [here](https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2025-11-04/hcws1015).

Implementation update for recommendation 6 - a regular, UK-wide pandemic response exercise (updated June 2025)

18. Updates on specific commitments made in the government response include:

a. The Tier 1 exercise (Exercise PEGASUS) on pandemic preparedness and response will take place between September and November 2025. Participation will be at a national and local level, and will include the four nations.

b. The completion of the National Capabilities Assessment review has informed the proposed National Exercising Programme, which sets out annual Tier 1 exercises from 2026 until 2030. Tier 1 exercises are large-scale national exercises involving the devolved governments and regional/local tier responders, as well as relevant industry engagement from key businesses, voluntary and community organisations.