Government sets out five to ten year plan to keep UK transport moving through disruption

The Department for Transport published its Transport Resilience Strategy on Monday, setting out how government, operators and local partners should prepare for storms, cyber incidents and other shocks to the UK's transport system over the next five to ten years.

The 66-page document, whose foreword is signed by Keir Mather, the minister responsible for transport resilience, applies the government's Resilience Action Plan of July 2025 to transport. It has three objectives: keep assessing how resilient the sector is, get the whole system including passengers ready to act, and strengthen government's own capabilities. Beneath those sit 22 commitments, listed in an annex.

Among them is an expert transport resilience red teaming panel. Red teaming means independent teams playing the part of an adversary to test a plan and find where it breaks.

Resilience standards for the transport sector will be developed and monitored, and the department says these may include customer outcome, system performance and system recovery standards.

A Transport Resilience Academy will start as a pilot, along with a Transport Resilience Network and senior resilience sponsors at transport operators. The academy is intended partly to deal with operators that cross several local areas, each with its own forum and way of working.

Digital twins, which are virtual models of the network used for monitoring and simulation, are also part of the plan. The department already has a programme that includes a Crisis Response and Resilience Digital Twin and trials with local and strategic authorities.

Passengers and vulnerable users

The strategy names a better experience of using transport as a primary goal of the work. The department will look at the specific risks faced by vulnerable users and decide whether operators need transport-specific guidance and training. It is also due to publish guidance for airlines operating in the UK on the support that should go to victims and families after an accident in UK airspace.

The cases it cites

The strategy uses past events to show how far problems spread. Storms in February 2014 washed away sections of the railway at Dawlish, and a £165m package of resilience measures has since been built there. Storm Darragh damaged Holyhead port in 2024, affecting freight and supply chains. Extreme heat and conflict in the Middle East are both listed as sources of disruption in 2026.

On cyber risk, it quotes independent research suggesting that a hypothetical systemic cyber incident on the rail network could cost about £1.8bn over a week of disruption, through lost productivity, recovery costs and knock-on effects on other services.

What happens next

The department says it will turn the commitments into a delivery plan with priority actions and clear responsibilities. Progress will feed into the Cabinet Office's Annual Statement to Parliament on risk and resilience each year and, where appropriate, go to the National Security Council sub-committee on resilience.