Be Ready for business
The government's Be Ready campaign is written for households. This is the business version.
Three days of water, three days of food and a wind-up radio is sensible advice at home. A firm also has stock to keep cold, staff to pay, customers waiting and a building to reopen safely. This page is the firm's version of the same campaign, set against the official restoration curve for a national power outage.
The campaign, in plain terms
On 22 October 2026 the UK government launched Be Ready, a three-year programme about how to prepare for disruption. The public-facing advice is short and sensible. Three days of water, three days of food, a wind-up radio, and a plan for what you do when the power goes off.
The framing is the household. The campaign works with a wide range of partner organisations, some of them businesses, and there is more than one kit list in circulation. But there is no business version of the guidance, because the campaign's business page does not exist. The link is dead.
That is the gap this page fills. A firm cannot run for three days on a tin of beans and a radio. It needs to know what happens to its stock, its staff, its customers and its building, and it needs to know what happens in the first four hours, because that is where most of the damage is done.
One thing to be clear about before you read on. This is Fleur Lamont's own work. We are not part of the campaign, the campaign has not asked us to write it, and nothing here is official campaign guidance.
The official restoration curve
You cannot plan around an average outage, so plan around the clock instead. The National Risk Register 2026 sets out the national power outage restoration curve. These are the official figures.
Within two days
About 60% of demand restored.
Days 3 to 4
The long middle. Reconnection carries on, but pockets stay dark.
Day 5 to 6
All customers restored.
Beyond day 7
Full and stable power.
Read that as a firm and it gives you three windows. The first four hours, the first day, and the first week. That is the shape of the rest of this page.
The cadence
Same three windows, mapped to what a firm actually has to do.
First 4 hours
The lights are off, the phones are on battery and nobody has decided anything yet. By the end of this window you should know what is still running, what is not, and who is allowed to make the call.
- What runs on battery, for how long, and who checks it. Card terminals, laptops, CCTV, the cold chain.
- Freezer and fridge temperatures, logged rather than guessed, so you know later what was lost and when.
- The decision to close, and who makes it. Write it down before you need it, not while the phone rings.
- Cash on the premises. A card machine needs power, and a customer does not care whose fault the power is.
- One message for staff and one for customers, agreed in advance, so nobody is inventing it at 7am.
First 24 hours
Most of the neighbourhood is still off, and so are your suppliers and your bank. The firm is still trading or it is not, and either way it is writing things down.
- Staff: pay, travel, who is working from where, and what is safe to ask them to do.
- Suppliers: who can still deliver, who cannot, and which orders to move to another date.
- Your insurer: the notification call, made early, with times and photographs.
- Orders and invoices on paper, so a day of trading does not vanish with the till.
- Your backup, restored rather than assumed. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a control.
First week
Power is back for most people and your problems are not. This is the week in which a firm either reopens properly or opens badly.
- Stock: what is spoiled, what is quarantined, what has to be written off, and what the insurer needs to see.
- Water: is it safe? For staff, for ice, for the coffee machine, for washing, and for anything you make.
- Reconnection: the electrics, the alarms, the cold chain and the water checked by someone qualified before you switch on and open the door.
- Customers: what you promised, what you can still deliver, and how they hear it from you.
- A short review: what the plan said, what actually happened, and the three things you change.
What the household kit list does not cover
A household loses a few days of convenience. A firm loses stock, pay, customers and its good name. None of the following is in the campaign's household advice, and all of it decides whether the firm is still trading in a week.
Cold chain and stock
Three days of drinking water does not hold a chiller at temperature. A cafe, a pharmacy, a butcher, a lab, a restaurant: the stock has a temperature, a time limit and a value, and when the power goes the clock starts.
Staff
People cannot get to work, they are not earning, and they are worried. Pay, travel, who comes in and who stays at home, and what happens to the rota when nobody can reach the building.
Customers
A shop with a dead card machine, a practice whose phone line is down, a customer waiting on a delivery. What you promised, what you can still deliver, and when they hear it from you.
Coming back safely
Is the water safe? Is the stock spoiled? Are the electrics safe to energise? Who signs the building off? A good part of the damage done after an outage is done by people going back in too early.
That is the difference between a household being ready and a firm being ready.
Where to start
Three ways to work on it. Take the first one, then decide.
The free guide
Ten things to check on one printable page, done in an afternoon. Free, no sign-up.
The resilience session
Ninety minutes, £450. The ten checks worked through on your kit. You leave with one page of answers, a backup restore to run yourself, and who to ring when the till stops.
The risk assessment
£1,500 fixed fee. The European Technology Risk Assessment on your systems, data and suppliers, with a written assessment you own.
The guide suits a firm where power is the only thing on your mind. The session is for the firm that wants the answers on paper. The assessment is for the organisation that has to answer a board, an insurer or a customer.
Know what your first week actually looks like
Bring your questions to a ninety-minute session and we work through the ten checks on your own kit: what runs on battery and for how long, what you would lose and how you would prove it, and what has to be checked before you reopen. You leave with the answers, a backup restore to run yourself, and the list of who to ring when the till stops.