Lessons in storm resilience

That this House congratulates local communities which came together to support each other during the January storms; recognises however that the storms exposed weaknesses in and that lessons should be learned by in respect of emergency and resilience plans, including the Met Office’s late declaration of the Red Alert prior to Storm Goretti, that the Emergency Alert wasn't received, or received late, by many; notes that though frontline workers and community volunteers' actions were heroic, the incident exposed an over-reliance on digital-only systems which failed, leaving isolated communities without safe and dependable means of communication, during prolonged electricity and water shortages and therefore severely hindered efforts to prioritise support and urgent assistance, elderly and vulnerable people were left without support for long periods; further notes that the priority registers of different services did not correspond and left many people without assistance, unfounded faith in modern digital technologies was exposed; considers that Government support seems not to be designed for very small or very large authorities like the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall, many communications systems, especially broadband, have still not been restored weeks after the first outage; and therefore urges the Government to address the resilience and public-safety lessons, to introduce sufficient resilience requirements, including for landline and mobile network operators and contingency plans for power back-up to protect the most vulnerable and dependent.