Publish Exercise Reports and Lessons

4.7 We recognise the importance of learning and sharing lessons from civil emergency exercises. A key priority for the Welsh Government is to learn the lessons from exercises and emergencies, and to help us, and the responder community, prepare for future incidents. It is also important we learn from past mistakes.

4.8 To support our approach to the implementation of lessons identified from inquiries, exercises and incidents, we are developing a new lessons management system, which enables improved prioritisation, coordination and monitoring of implementation. By introducing this new management system, we aim to close the loop between identifying lessons and achieving positive, lasting, improvements in practice.

4.9 This new management system also helps to identify and prioritise areas for enhancing capabilities, and drive continual improvement in the way that we assess, prepare and respond to emergencies.

4.10 We are also engaging with many of our key partners, including Public Health Wales, who also have identified the benefits of a consistent approach to lessons management within their organisations.

4.11 We also utilise Resilience Direct as a secure means of sharing information with the responder community in Wales.

4.12 We currently participate in discussions on exercising through the UK Government’s Training and Exercising Advisory Board, which provides access to developments within the UK Government’s National Exercising Program, including Tier 1 exercises.

4.13 We accept that for tier 1 civil emergency exercises the Welsh Government should publish findings and lessons from exercises (except where there are legitimate security or public safety reasons not to do so).

The Scottish Government accepts this recommendation and acknowledges the need to publish exercise reports and associated action plans for civil emergency exercises. We support increased transparency around the exercises conducted. Therefore, we support the publication of reports and their associated action plans in relation to Tier 1 exercises, increasing accessibility to information on civil emergency exercises and their findings (unless there are reasons of national security for not doing so).

We agree that exercising reports and corresponding plans and guidance should be accessible to those who are involved in emergency preparedness, resilience and response. We are committed to continuous learning. Having more openness regarding Tier 1 civil emergency exercises will provide us with an opportunity to share learning with a wider audience, including the voluntary and community sector, who play an important role in emergency preparedness and response.

We recognise that categorised responders carry out civil emergency exercises as part of their duties under the Civil Contingencies Act, and so we have already taken action to increase efficiency and clarity around the exercise process. We are currently working actively with multi-agency partners to reinvigorate the Scottish Exercise notification process and Scottish National Exercise Calendar. This will provide uniform knowledge of planned exercises, promote information sharing and prevent duplication. This will be in place for use by categorised responders by July 2025.

In order to support and encourage a robust debriefing and lessons process amongst categorised responders, the Scottish Government has developed and released a National Debriefing and Lessons Protocol. The Protocol aims to support the lessons and debrief process, which is a vital part of the learning cycle, and provides an opportunity to demonstrate continuous improvement within resilience in Scotland. Preparing Scotland Exercise Guidance also sets out that where categorised responders are conducting exercises, the Post-Exercise Reports should be produced and shared on Resilience Direct to ensure the learning can be shared across Scotland. Resilience Direct is a Cabinet Office-owned web-based platform which provides government and categorised responders a secure space to share information relating to planning, response and recovery from emergencies.

We are supportive of the publication of findings and lessons reports wherever possible from Tier 1 civil emergency exercises.

We recognise the importance of learning and sharing lessons from civil emergency exercises and acknowledge that further work is required to embed the culture of publishing and learning from exercise reports. We therefore, accept this recommendation.

The Resilience Direct platform is accessible by civil contingencies practitioners and therefore provides an ideal forum for publishing exercise reports with those involved in emergency preparedness, resilience and response. Currently, Resilience Direct is utilised as a repository for post exercise reports with the emergency services also utilising the Joint Organisational Learning methodology for raising and accessing key post incident or exercise learning.

Northern Ireland is involved in discussions on exercising and lessons management through the Cross-government and Devolved Governments’ Training and Exercising Advisory Board, which provides access to developments within the UK Government’s National Exercising Programme, Crisis Management Excellence Programme and the development of the UK Resilience Academy and enables us to both benefit from and contribute to discussions.

We also recognise that there is more to do regarding the creation of a central, UK-wide online repository of information relating to civil emergency exercises. We understand that the Cabinet Office is currently considering solutions to address this and to facilitate openness and a shared process for the management of lessons.

“Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance”, developed by the Cabinet Office and published in 2024, sets out the need for a report summarising the findings, lessons and recommendations within three months of the conclusion of an exercise or incident. We recognise the importance of identifying and implementing post exercise learning and have incorporated the recent Cabinet Office guidance on exercising and lessons management into the NI Civil Contingencies Learning and Development Strategy. The provision of a planning and exercising course reflects the importance of good fundamental planning skills which include training and exercising within the planning cycle.

Consideration will be given as to whether recommendations arising from certain exercises will be brought to CCG(NI) for broader consideration of cross-cutting lessons, themes or inter-dependencies.

The government agrees that, given the UK-wide cross-cutting implications, the UK government should publish findings and lessons from all Tier 1 civil emergency exercises (except where there are justifiable reasons not to do so, such as national security concerns). Tier 1 exercises (as described in Recommendation 6) involve cross-government participation and relevant devolved government, regional and local responders.

The Academy Exercising Hub, which will form part of the UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) from its launch in April 2025, will ensure that government departments, devolved governments, local and regional tiers of government, and those in the voluntary and community sectors have access to the appropriate resources to strengthen exercising and lessons management. It will also fulfil a convening role, encouraging collaboration on exercising and lessons management across organisational silos.

As part of the vision and outputs for the UKRA the government published Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance on gov.uk in 2024. It has been designed to complement existing learning activities, be used in conjunction with established lessons’ platforms, and to support continual improvement at national and local levels.

The guidance sets best practice for the dissemination of a report summarising the findings, lessons and recommendations within three months of an exercise and advocates for the agreement of a strategic Implementation Action Plan within six months of the conclusion of an exercise. It should be recognised that for a Tier 1 exercise, the process of governance, debriefing, evaluating, disseminating and reviewing may take up to 12 months to make a report publicly available. The guidance also provides templates that can be used in the lesson management process. These include an Observation Capture Template, Cold Debrief Template and templates for a Lessons Management Register and Implementation Action Tracker which can be used for any exercise, regardless of scale.

To complement this guidance by providing context and highlighting examples of the lessons management process in practice, the UK Resilience Lessons Digest has been produced in collaboration with the Emergency Planning College. The publicly available Digest synthesises lessons learned from major exercises and emergencies, with each issue providing analysis of lessons arising from public facing reports generated after the events. It coordinates knowledge to promote continual improvement in UK resilience training, exercising, doctrine, standards and good practice.

A further established platform for capturing lessons is Joint Organisational Learning, hosted on ResilienceDirect. It is used to capture and share lessons identified from local and national multi-agency exercises and emergencies. The Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme team (responsible for encouraging interoperability across the emergency services and supported by a cross-government board) is actively working to encourage improved use of the platform to help minimise isolated lessons capture and limited sharing.

The government recognises that there is more to do to strengthen the systematic management of lessons from exercising. This will require a central, UK-wide online repository of information relating to civil emergency exercises, embedding the guidance on making effective recommendations in exercise reports, and a system that continues to promote a learning culture across teams, departments, organisations and multi-agency partners. The Cabinet Office is scoping and testing solutions to resolve this issue.

The reinvigorated Scottish Training and Exercising Calendar went live on 10 February 2026. The Calendar was published on Resilience Direct and work is ongoing to ensure that responders are aware of the calendar and associated resources. It is also a standing agenda item on the multi-agency Scottish Civil Contingencies Development Forum, which met again on 11 June 2026.

The Scottish Government and the UK Government are both undertaking analysis and evaluation of Exercise Pegasus. The findings from both reports will be published in late 2026. The Scottish Government is committed to the continuous monitoring and evaluation of the recommendations identified.

Status: OPEN Introduction We recognise the importance of learning and sharing lessons from civil emergency exercises. Progress update We have undertaken a Storm Éowyn Civil Contingencies Lessons Identified project, involving a multi-stage data collection, analysis and verification process, carried out in line with the UK Resilience Academy’s Lessons Management Guidance.

The Welsh Government is committed to transparency and continual improvement in civil emergency preparedness. For Tier 1 civil emergency exercises, we publish findings and lessons learned, except where legitimate security or public safety considerations applies.

Our lessons management system will be central to capturing insights from exercises, incidents, and inquiries, and ensuring actions are followed up. We have engaged the UK Resilience Academy to work with the Wales Resilience Partnership to explore opportunities for a lessons-management system to capture lessons from exercises, incidents and inquiries, which will be most appropriately addressed by partners at a pan-Wales level. This approach supports the Wales Resilience Framework principles of efficiency and a once-for-Wales approach.

Development is underway on a UK-wide online repository of information relating to civil emergency exercises, as well as a tool to collect lessons identified in crisis responses. The Cabinet Office established a cross-government Lessons Management Special Interest Group to develop a lessons management framework for central government. This framework will define a system-wide approach for managing lessons, especially those with cross-cutting implications, the expectations on the publication of lessons and how these are made accessible across government.

The schedule for the publication of the Report of Exercise PEGASUS is to be confirmed, but the final report will need to take the summer 2026 Table Top Exercise into account as a fourth and final phase of Exercise PEGASUS, so is likely to be published in winter 2026. We are looking to make initial findings (from the first three phases of Exercise PEGASUS) available as soon as reasonably possible in early 2026.

The best practice mapping work for a central, UK-wide online repository is ongoing across government and is being scoped for implementation. It is expected that the scoping of the work will conclude in 2026.

The Government has committed to communicating the findings and lessons of the exercise as recommended by the COVID-19 Inquiry, and a post-exercise report will be delivered in due course. The evaluation of Exercise PEGASUS is ongoing and once complete, recommendations will be generated.

Implementation update for recommendation 7 - publication of findings and lessons from civil emergency exercises (updated June 2025)

19. The Cabinet Office provides a range of resources to promote Lessons Management, including the Lessons Management Best Practice Guidance, Lessons Digest, UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) Exercising Hub and the Joint Organisational Learning platform. Work is underway across government to scope and test solutions to create a UK-wide online repository of information relating to civil emergency exercises. The Cabinet Office has established a cross-government Lessons Management Special Interest Group to lead work to develop a lessons management framework for central government. This framework will define how lessons are managed across government, ensuring that a system wide approach is taken to managing lessons with cross-cutting implications. The framework will also define expectations on the publication of lessons and how these are made accessible across government.

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

a. The government is committed to publishing findings and lessons from all Tier 1 civil emergency exercises unless there are justifiable reasons not to, such as national security. The process of governance, debriefing, evaluating, disseminating, and reviewing means it may take up to 12 months to make Tier 1 exercise reports publicly available.

b. The UKRA launched in April 2025. The Exercising Hub within the website’s ‘Validate’ section aims to help individuals to develop the skills they need to conduct exercises in their own organisations. The website will be regularly updated with relevant resources to strengthen exercising and lesson management across the whole of society, including central, devolved, and local governments.