Policy making in a crisis: A civil servant’s guide

Introduction

Crises place unique and distinct pressures on the civil service. Whether far-reaching, like the Covid pandemic, or more contained, like severe weather and flooding they demand fast, confident decision making under pressure. Failure to act – and often to be seen to act – in a timely and credible way can quickly erode public trust and confidence, making it harder for the government to deliver on longer-term priorities.

Our recent report, Rapid policy making, explored how civil servants can provide rapid yet robust policy advice on ‘urgent priorities’ outside the bounds of formal crises and emergencies. ¹²³ V Dzimwasha, N Davison, R Hodgkin, ’Rapid policymaking’, Institute for Government, December 2025, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/rapid-policy-making  This guide complements this, looking at how officials can work well during crises, of various nature.

Crises offer some of the clearest case studies of how to do rapid policy making well – as well as what to avoid. The ‘burning platform’ a crisis provides can for instance jolt the system into action and create the conditions for effective policy making: 

• sustained ministerial attention
• clear goals
• rapid reallocation of funding and resources
• streamlined bureaucratic processes
• greater openness to external expertise and experimentation. 

But crises also lay bare familiar pitfalls in central government policy making – from a failure to consider long-term consequences, to reliance on a small group of well-established voices and limited challenge. 

The transition from crisis response to ‘business as usual’ can also be neglected as minimal effort is invested in structured handovers between crisis and policy teams, leaving longer-term issues that surface during a crisis unresolved.

This mixed picture has been evident in recent years. The pandemic spurred some of the fastest and most innovative collaboration between government and industry in recent memory, while also exposing major weaknesses in the government’s ability to manage and coordinate a prolonged, complex emergency response. ¹²⁴ C Martin, H Kan, M Fink, 'Crisis preparation in the age of long emergencies’, March 2023, www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-03/BSG-Crisis-preparation-age-long-emergencies.pdf

And then, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the government cushioned households against the energy price shock, but at a significant cost, as gaps in data limited the ability to target support effectively (an issue that continues to this day as government struggles to design a more targeted response to the energy crisis triggered by the Iran war). ¹²⁵ O Bartrum, ‘Better use of data is needed for better energy support policies’, Institute for Government, December 2022 www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/better-data-energy-support-policies ¹²⁶ R Hodgkin, J Rutter, D Haile, ‘Managing the economic consequences of the Iran war’, Institute for Government, April 2026, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/managing-economic-consequences-iran-war  The 2022 crisis also created acute humanitarian pressures that the government responded to by housing refugees through the Homes of Ukraine scheme. ¹²⁷ J Rutter, ‘The Home Office’s botched Ukraine crisis response needs an urgent rethink’, Institute for Government, March 2022 www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/home-offices-botched-ukraine-crisis-response-needs-urgent-rethink  Yet failure to establish longer-term plans, including what councils should do as home placements came to an end, led to increased numbers of Ukrainian refugees at risk of homelessness. ¹²⁸ British Red Cross, ‘Finding a safe home report: What can we learn about solutions to refugee accommodation from the Ukraine response?, July 2024, www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/we-speak-up-for-change/finding-a-safe-home

This guide provides insights into what works in crisis policy making, what doesn’t and why – drawing on previous Institute research, and interviews and workshops with current and former Whitehall officials. Each insight is followed by practical prompts that officials at all grades can ask themselves to capitalise on the conditions a crisis creates to develop robust policy advice when time is short and the stakes are high.

What works when the pressure is on – and what doesn’t

1. Clarity about goals drives focus and speed – but can risk crowding out consideration of long-term consequences

“Crises are almost easier to deal with than ongoing projects, because you can see clearly what the problem is, so everyone is focused on trying to sort it. Blame-shifting is not an option in the middle of a crisis”. ¹⁵¹ Interview transcript, Baroness Kramer, March 2016, Ministers reflect archive, Institute for Government, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/baroness-kramer

Baroness Kramer

When the stakes are high – for the economy, national security or people’s lives – clarity about immediate goals is one of the most important ingredients for an effective short-term response. The government’s Amber Book emphasises ‘direction’ as a core principle for effective crisis management, noting “clarity of purpose should be achieved through a shared understanding of strategic aims and supporting objectives for a response, agreed and understood by all”. ¹⁵² Cabinet Office, ‘The Amber Book - Managing Crisis in Central Government’, 28 April 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-central-government-s-concept-of-operations  This requires ministers and officials to use the right processes and have the right conversations to surface, test and refine priorities. 

The government has developed several mechanisms to achieve clarity during a crisis. Crisis framing – maintained by the COBR Directorate, Cabinet Office’s dedicated crisis management team – is a process designed to build a common understanding of events as they unfold, articulate clear strategic goals and establish the appropriate response. ¹⁵³ Cabinet Office, ‘The Amber Book - Managing Crisis in Central Government’, 28 April 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-central-government-s-concept-of-operations  When COBR is activated, the response team pulls together a Commonly Recognised Information Picture (CRIP),which aims to reinforce ‘direction’ by ensuring key departments and delivery bodies are working on the basis of the same verified snapshot of events, risks and assumptions. ¹⁵⁴ Cabinet Office, ‘SAGE guidance’, 17 December 2024, www.gov.uk/government/publications/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-guidance/sage-guidance-html

Clarity can also be created outside formal cross-government crisis mechanisms. Officials told us that it can be achieved by “zooming in on the specific outcome you want” and directing all decision-making towards that goal. This requires consistent focus on the question: what do ministers want to achieve? This approach can help prioritise objectives, surface trade-offs and avoid the ‘policy creep’ that so often occurs because of competing demands and interests in business-as-usual policy making. 

For example, officials who worked on financial recovery measures during the pandemic described how ministers clearly outlined what they wanted to achieve and the trade-offs they were willing to accept when commissioning advice. The impetus for this was likely the scale and cost of inaction, namely the potential collapse of the UK’s labour market through significant job losses. ¹⁵⁵ T Pope, G Dalton, G Tetlow, ‘The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme’, Institute for Government, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/report/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme  Officials told us that they could provide advice to ministers more quickly than in “business as usual times which is more a guess exercise on what is wanted and why because these are not communicated through the layers of officialdom”.

However, while essential in the short term, this focus on the immediate crisis response can direct resources and attention towards managing immediate symptoms at the expense of longer-term impacts, or the transition to recovery. This is partly driven by the structures that underpin the UK’s crisis response – which are designed to manage short, sharp disruptions ¹⁵⁶ C Martin, H Kan, M Fink, 'Crisis preparation in the age of long emergencies’, March 2023, www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-03/BSG-Crisis-preparation-age-long-emergencies.pdf ¹⁵⁷ S Nickson, A Thomas, E Mullens-Burgess, ‘Decision making in a crisis: First responses to the coronavirus pandemic’, Institute for Government, August 2020, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/report/decision-making-crisis  – and partly by political incentives that shape what ministers prioritise and the demands placed on officials. As one senior official noted, “it can be hard to get ministers to look beyond the right now”. 

This is understandable, however this mode of working can make it difficult for civil servants to balance immediate advice with planning ahead – as the Amber Book encourages – for example by considering recovery needs or proposing more substantive policies or reforms needed to prevent or mitigate future crises.

The government’s approach to flood management illustrates this trade-off. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report on the 2021 floods highlighted that incident management – deploying emergency responders and putting urgent and immediate support in place for affected communities – typically overshadowed consideration of what affected communities need after the flood waters recede. ¹⁵⁸ House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, ‘Flooding: Fourth Report of Session 2019–21’, HC 170, 8 February 2021, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/4601/documents/46603/default/  The report found that this was partly due to a lack of clear central government ownership or an accompanying plan to support the “long-term physical, economic, and psychological recovery of communities impacted by flooding”. 

The government has since taken steps to rebalance this through the introduction of the Flood Recovery Framework, which aims to embed a focus on the long-term recovery needs of affected communities (though it relies on a minister to activate it). ¹⁵⁹ House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, ‘Flooding: Fourth Report of Session 2019–21’, HC 170, 8 February 2021, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/4601/documents/46603/default/  The framework was activated during the winter of 2023/24 and there is early evidence that it was effective in ensuring a smoother transition from the immediate emergency to long-term recovery efforts. ¹⁶⁰ Alex Norris, ‘Post Activation Review of the Flood Recovery Framework’, UK Parliament, Written Statement, 13 March 2025, https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2025-03-13/hcws518

The Homes for Ukraine scheme was another example of these trade-offs. The then government failed to plan for what would happen to refugees who struggled to find more permanent housing as placements came to an end. ¹⁶¹ British Red Cross, ‘Finding a safe home report: What can we learn about solutions to refugee accommodation from the Ukraine response?, July 2024, www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/we-speak-up-for-change/finding-a-safe-home ¹⁶² National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into the Homes for Ukraine scheme’, HC 1863, 17 October 2023, www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/investigation-into-the-homes-for-ukraine-scheme.pdf  After significant delay, the government issued guidance to local authorities specifying the steps they could take to address the growing risk of homelessness amongst this group, including facilitating rematches.

During the same period, the Energy Price Guarantee and Energy Bills Support Scheme (EBSS), introduced in October 2022, was rolled out rapidly and helped to cushion households from sudden energy price increases, with low levels of fraud. ¹⁶³ ‘Letter from Clive Maxwell CB CBE, Interim Permanent Secretary, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, to Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair, Public Accounts Committee’, 11 December 2025, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/50994/documents/282470/default/ ¹⁶⁴ Committee of Public Accounts, ‘Energy Bills Support: Nineteenth Report of Session 2024–25’, HC 511, 28 March 2025, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/47200/documents/245887/default/ ¹⁶⁵ UK Government, ‘RAF002/2425: Domestic energy affordability support schemes, Impact and Economic Evaluation Final report’, November 2025, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69257f399fd433badebc3102/domestic-energy-affordability-support-impact-economic-evaluation.pdf  But the government did not have a universal dataset of household income to target support effectively ¹⁶⁶ O Bartrum, ‘Better use of data is needed for better energy support policies’, Institute for Government, December 2022 www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/better-data-energy-support-policies  meaning that it also reached individuals who did not need it. This was costly: the schemes cost approximately 1.3% of annual GDP between October 2022 and March 2023 – equivalent to two-thirds of the UK’s defence budget. ¹⁶⁷ P Levell, M O’Connell, K Smith, ‘The welfare effects of price shocks and household relief packages: Evidence from the European Energy Crisis’, Institute for Fiscal Studies, January 2025, https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-01/WP202503-The-welfare-effects-of-price-shocks-and-household-relief-packages-evidence-from-the-european-…

Choosing to focus on short-term financial support meant that the government overlooked the longer-term energy efficiency improvements that could reduce households’ exposure to future energy price shocks, especially as previous cuts to energy efficiency programmes meant the UK was comparatively more vulnerable than other countries. ¹⁶⁸ R Hodgkin, T Sasse, ‘Tackling the UK’s energy efficiency problem’, Institute for Government, September 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/tackling-uk-energy-efficiency-problem  The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has increased funding for home upgrades and is aiming to build capabilities in data sharing to enable better targeting of support in the future. ¹⁶⁹ ‘Letter from Clive Maxwell CB CBE, Interim Permanent Secretary, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, to Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair, Public Accounts Committee’, 11 December 2025, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/50994/documents/282470/default/ ¹⁷⁰ Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Warm Homes Plan, 21 January 2026 www.gov.uk/government/publications/warm-homes-plan  But the recent energy price crisis sparked by the conflict in the Middle East has again shown the limitations of the government’s ability to design a well targeted scheme.

Key lesson 1: Clarifying short-term objectives and considering long term impacts and recovery

For civil servants, the lesson is that clarity in the short term is necessary and is most likely to be achieved by having the right conversations at the right moments with decision makers. However, too singular a focus on firefighting can carry risks: crowding out a focus on long-term needs and implications and deprioritising the transition to business-as-usual policy making.

Civil servants should aim to facilitate both. Striking this balance will be challenging – and the extent to which it is possible will largely be shaped by ministerial appetite – but the prompts below can help clarify your thinking:

• Do you know what the minister expects of you and your team during the crisis? Are you clear on their top priority and red lines and are you taking steps to regularly sense check your understanding of these?
• Are you clear on who will be responsible for considering longer term impacts and how you can ensure they are not drawn into the immediate crisis response?
• Are you monitoring emerging, but non-urgent, issues that you can hand over to other policy teams for fuller consideration now, or after the immediate crisis has passed?
• Imagine it’s six months from now and the headlines are negative. What failures are being attributed to how this policy was designed and implemented? How can you address these risks now?

2. Decisions can be made quickly – but appropriate safeguards should not be abandoned

“The civil service, in my view, is at its best when it’s thrown into a crisis… people have to step up and make decisions. And they do so quite well.” ¹⁷⁸ Interview transcript, George Eustice, 10 May 2023, Ministers reflect archive, Institute for Government, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/george-eustice  

George Eustice, former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

A major crisis attracts senior attention and demands accelerated decision making. This can force the civil service to remove the barriers that would ordinarily slow decision making, such as muddled accountabilities, decision rights and escalation routes. ¹⁷⁹ T Sasse, A Thomas, ‘Better policy making’, Institute for Government, March 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/better-policy-making  Often this is achieved by using established structures like the COBR machinery or activating (and in some cases, re-purposing) existing decision making forums. The effectiveness of these forums depends on how they command knowledge and authority in the system and shape the behaviours of ministers and officials.

At its most effective, COBR can enable accelerated decision making and create the conditions for ministers – alongside senior civil servants, local government officials and emergency services – to ‘grip’ an issue and unblock problems more rapidly than usual processes allow. ¹⁸⁰ C Martin, H Kan, M Fink, 'Crisis preparation in the age of long emergencies’, Oxford University, March 2023, www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-03/BSG-Crisis-preparation-age-long-emergencies.pdf  For instance, the independent Pitt review into the summer 2007 floods found that activating COBR meant the response in July was “better co-ordinated and more focused” than the response to similar floods the month before, when COBR was not activated. ¹⁸¹ ‘Pitt Review: Learning lessons from the 2007 floods’, 25 June 2008, www.jesip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Pitt-Review-UK-Floods.pdf

Within departments, smaller committees or repurposed forums can play a similar role. At their best, they replicate the conditions COBR can create: a small and empowered membership to prevent committee-style dynamics (which can resemble ‘talking shops’) and structured, speedy decision making and coordination. During Defra’s pandemic food supply response, for example, a tight empowered decision-making forum – with officials and senior representatives from across the food supply chain – helped the department maintain grip and act decisively despite rapidly changing pressures. ¹⁸² ‘Written evidence submitted by the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) (COV0142) to House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee COVID-19 and food supply’, 1 July 2020, https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/5286/html/

These forums are most valuable, however, when they sharpen and support the crisis response rather than become a burden on it. The Amber Book stresses the importance of “minimising the burden on local responders” ¹⁸³ Cabinet Office, ‘The Amber Book - Managing Crisis in Central Government’, 28 April 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-central-government-s-concept-of-operations  and the COBR Directorate works closely with them to avoid drawing effort away from frontline activity. Even so, there is a balance to strike: if meetings become too frequent or reporting too burdensome teams can end up servicing the machinery of crisis management rather than delivering the response itself. ¹⁸⁴ Home Affairs Committee, ‘The Home Office's Response to Terrorist Attacks’, 2 February 2010, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmhaff/117/11705.htm

Accelerated decision making is essential during a crisis, but it can come at the expense of robustness. Pace necessitates shortcuts. Officials told us it was not uncommon to bypass structured impact assessments such as equalities impact assessments in the name of speed. This, combined with a higher risk appetite and a loosening of financial controls - with ministers and civil servants, as one official put it, more willing “to get things done, no matter” – can increase the risk of unintended consequences.

Spending across the pandemic is a notable example. Several ministerial directions were issued to enable faster progress on key economic support schemes in part because officials could not carry out the necessary checks to ensure value for money. In some cases, the schemes were not subject to standard governance processes which may have mitigated key implementation risks. For example, the Bounce Back Loan scheme for businesses was up and running within two weeks of being proposed, after the government had been criticised for not getting money to businesses through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) small company loan scheme quickly enough. ¹⁹⁰ G Wilkes, ‘The government’s coronavirus bailout should not be built on unaffordable loans’, Institute for Government, 24 April 2020, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/governments-coronavirus-bailout-should-not-be-built-unaffordable-loans

Government did not produce a Fraud and Risk Assessment until after the scheme was live. Doing so earlier would likely have encouraged officials and ministers to give greater consideration to risks and ensure appropriate safeguards were in place before it was rolled out. Government estimates that this oversight ultimately cost around £3.3bn – 7.7bn, accounting for approximately 10-15% of the overall loans. ¹⁹¹ HM Treasury, ‘Final Report of the Covid Counter Fraud Commissioner’, 9 December 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-of-the-covid-counter-fraud-commissioner ¹⁹² House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, ‘Covid-19: Bounce Back Loan Scheme. Thirty-Third Report of Session 2019-21’, HC 687, 16 December 2020, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/3988/documents/40040/default/ ¹⁹³ National Audit Office, ‘Investigation into the Bounce Back Loan Scheme’, HC 860, 7 October 2020, www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Investigation-into-the-Bounce-Back-Loan-Scheme.pdf ¹⁹⁴ National Audit Office, ‘The Bounce Back Loan Scheme: an update’, HC 861, 3 December 2021, www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Bounce-Back-Loan-Scheme-an-update.pdf

Moreover, the same decision-making forums that facilitate rapid action can leave little room for stress-testing or interrogating assumptions. For instance, we heard that the large meeting format for COBR is not conducive to working through sensitive political disagreements or surfacing fundamental differences in approach. This means it can be difficult to have open conversations that question established norms or challenge the prevailing direction of travel.

Key lesson 2: Making fast, but rigorous decisions

Effective governance in a crisis needs to strike a balance between speed, coordination and appropriate checks and balances to maintain rigour. This requires putting appropriate governance structures in place, involving the right decision makers and creating opportunities to test and challenge assumptions. The prompts below can help officials shape effective governance (recognising that the level of agency officials have will vary from crisis to crisis):

• Do you know which governance structures – across your department, and more widely – could be used or adapted to get things moving once your minister has provided a steer? Are they suitable for making decisions rather than simply providing updates and assurances?
• Who needs to be in the room to make critical decisions (rather than who wants to be)? Do they have the right expertise and authority? Are they clear about what is expected of them – including what should be escalated, when and to whom?
• Are there any other decision-makers in your department, and across government, who you should keep updated? Who is checking in regularly to ensure they are aligned on the aims and scope of your advice? Are there any risks, sensitivities or system or population impacts that need to be managed and escalated?
• What assumptions are driving your response? Who can you test and validate them with outside the core team?
• What are the minimum levels of oversight and assurance that cannot be dispensed with – even if it is a rapid, light touch impact assessment or fraud risk check – to maintain pace while ensuring that advice to ministers remain robust?

3. The policy-operational gap can be bridged – but only if the people responsible for implementation are involved in policy design

“We spoke to a lot of different organisations, departments and delivery arms, more so than usual. It was much easier to work together, as we all pulled together [for] a common cause.”

Civil servant survey respondent

It is well-evidenced that within the civil service, “delivery is too often the poor relation to policy”. ²⁰⁰ Francis Maude, ‘Fixing Whitehall’, Prospect, 14 November 2013, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/opinions/51751/francis-maude-fixing-whitehall  As the Institute has previously argued, this is can be due to professional/organisational silos and deeper structural incentives in government. ²⁰¹ T Sasse, A Thomas, ‘Better policy making’, Institute for Government, March 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/better-policy-making  Policy teams are generally rewarded for generating options quickly and do not always have the ability (or will) to involve delivery and operational expertise early in the process. ²⁰² T Sasse, A Thomas, ‘Better policy making’, Institute for Government, March 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/better-policy-making  At the same time, opportunities for meaningful cross-government and cross-team collaboration can be limited – because of professional or organisational differences, misaligned priorities and/or lack of sustained ministerial support. ²⁰³ T Sasse, A Thomas, ‘Better policy making’, Institute for Government, March 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/better-policy-making

Together, this can mean policies developed by a relatively small group of civil servants are susceptible to failure when they meet the reality of implementation. 

During crises, the same dynamics can play out, especially as civil servants are under pressure. For instance, when it came to Covid testing, the then health secretary’s ambitious target of administering 100,000 tests a day drove rapid growth in capacity, but efforts focused on lab capacity with little attention paid to engaging with the NHS or diagnostic industry to ensure fit-for-purpose arrangements were in place to collect samples and return results. The government later addressed this, but it meant that testing efforts were less effective in the early phases of the pandemic. ²⁰⁴ S Nickson, A Thomas, E Mullens-Burgess, ‘Decision making in a crisis: First responses to the coronavirus pandemic’, Institute for Government, August 2020, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/report/decision-making-crisis

However, the repercussions of poor implementation can sometimes be too high to ignore in a crisis. This, coupled with greater clarity around objectives (at least in the short term), provides an opportunity to bridge the policy-implementation gap. The design and rollout of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furlough) illustrates this dynamic. As chancellor, Rishi Sunak engaged directly with operational civil servants in HMRC from the outset – an approach that officials told us was unusual. While the scheme still faced some challenges with fraud, the initial proximity between policy and operational teams (alongside businesses and unions) meant delivery risks were surfaced early, assumptions could be tested in real time, and decisions were more grounded in what was feasible, allowing a fully functioning scheme to launch at an unprecedented pace.

Key lesson 3: Closing the policy-operational divide

A genuine crisis or emergency provides an opportunity to integrate delivery expertise in the early stages of policy development – especially when the costs of poor delivery are considered too high. To capitalise on this, officials need to consider when to bring in this expertise, who needs to be involved and how they can be used effectively to develop a policy that meets ministers’ preferences and is workable on the ground. The prompts below can help guide this:

• Who is critical to implementation and how can you work with them to understand their perspectives and requirements ahead of time? Consider: government departments, agencies, public bodies, different tiers of government, the private sector and civil society.
• How can you rapidly stress-test your policy options internally and with affected parties (e.g. making use of red teaming)?
•  Are you being clear on what the purpose of your engagement is at this point in the policy development cycle and how different groups can best contribute to making the policy workable (e.g. advise on how to make the plan work or highlight potential risks that need to be addressed ahead of time)?
• Are ministers hearing about operational impacts and risks directly from the people responsible for delivery? Who is missing from the conversation that could offer a different perspective?
• How will you learn from implementation rapidly? What feedback loops can you use or build?

4. Evidence and insight can be quickly mobilised – but using it effectively requires careful judgement

Speed can typically leave officials with little choice but to sideline data and evidence, ²¹³ V Dzimwasha, N Davison, R Hodgkin, ’Rapid policymaking’, Institute for Government, December 2025, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/rapid-policy-making  or rely on partial assumptions and limiting detailed analysis of how different groups may be affected. However, the far-reaching consequences of a genuine crisis can also provide the impetus to mobilise data and evidence rapidly through any means possible. This typically results in a willingness to use alternative data sources and networks.

In some cases, this can be facilitated by existing departmental structures. One former senior Defra official noted that external engagement during a crisis was “easy” because the department had established networks, knew the people they could call on, and, occasionally, provided them with a physical space in departmental offices to work. In other cases, it is simply the nature of the crisis that prompts the development of novel or alternative methods to build a full picture of what is happening.

The pandemic again provides clear examples of this. The centre of government not only leaned heavily on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) for scientific advice, but it also drew on real-time dashboards, ²¹⁴ UK Covid-19 Inquiry, ’Module 2, 2A, 2B, 2C Report - Core decision-making and political governance’, 20 November 2025, https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/documents/module-2-full-report/# ²¹⁵ Royal Statistical Society, ’Tracking and transparency: the UK Covid-19 dashboard’, Case Study, accessed on 7 April 2026, https://rss.org.uk/policy-campaigns/policy-groups/statistics-under-pressure-steering-group/statistics-under-pressure-informing-decision-makin/statist…  and, as one expert explained, behavioural insights and polling data to understand behaviour and improve compliance with restrictions – sources that might not have otherwise been used. 

This approach was seen in other departments too. The Department for Transport (DfT) needed up-to-date transport statistics to help government understand compliance with restrictions. This was particularly challenging for bus travel where (outside of London) data was normally collected quarterly. To address this, the team partnered with Ticketer – a private company supplying smart ticketing systems to buses across the UK – using its data to provide hourly estimates of travel patterns. The partnership was set up far more quickly than would have normally been possible outside of a crisis and, while the data did not offer a complete picture, it enabled DfT to produce timely estimates of trends to inform wider decisions. ²¹⁶ Institute of Transport Administration, ’Ticketer’s innovation helps government with data with operators with solutions through Covid-19’, Blog, 2 June 2020, www.iota.org.uk/blog/ticketers-innovation-helps-government-with-data-and-operators-with-solutions-through-covid-19

This scheme was only possible because of a willingness to mobilise data, whatever it took. As a civil servant interviewed by the Royal Statistics Society explained, “barriers that people usually have about commercial interests and data sharing were broken down. People realised that in a time of national crisis, you step up to help inform decision making”.

In these examples, the crisis did not inherently produce better evidence but removed the friction that usually prevents a full range of sources being used – however uncertain – in policy making. This has benefits, but again carries risks: over-interpreting limited data, an overreliance on quantitative data that may obscure real world impacts, and insufficient scrutiny of the evidence base.

For instance, SAGE modelling during the pandemic was useful in informing key health measures, but has since been criticised for relying too heavily on uncertain assumptions and for its limited ability to capture social or behavioural factors, or frontline experiences. ²¹⁷ UK Covid-19 Inquiry, ’Module 2, 2A, 2B, 2C Report - Core decision-making and political governance’, 20 November 2025, https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/documents/module-2-full-report/#  Similarly, several aspects of the pandemic response were criticised for not taking into account how policies might affect different groups, particularly those who were not well-represented among decision makers. ²¹⁸ UK Covid-19 Inquiry, ’Module 2 Report ’In Brief’ summary - Core decision-making and political governance’, accessed on 7 April 2026, https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/reports/module-2-report-in-brief-summary-core-decision-making-and-political-governance/ ²¹⁹ G Tetlow, S Sangha, ’Combined epidemiological and economic modelling How can government better prepare for future pandemics?’, Institute for Government, November 2025, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/epidemiological-economic-modelling-future-pandemics

In response to these issues, the previous government established the National Situation Centre (SitCen) in September 2021 to bring data and analysis together for crisis and risk management in the centre of government. This is a notable improvement on the situation before the pandemic. The SitCen has been used to support the response to events including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, extreme heat and the Sudan evacuation. ²²⁰ Whitehall Monitor 2024, Institute for Government, January 2024, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/whitehall-monitor-2024  But outside the centre officials still need to ensure that they are carefully accessing the quality of evidence and what might be missing.

Key lesson 4: Rapidly mobilising data and insights, and using them well

Crises can alter both the availability and nature of evidence, as well as the behaviours that shape decision making about what data to use and how. This can create opportunities for rapid evidence mobilisation – but using it well under pressure requires careful judgement about what the data shows, what is missing and how it should be interpreted in policy making. The prompts below aim to support officials to make effective use of data and insights:

• What information do you need to be able to produce robust advice for your ministers? What do they need to know to make good decisions?
• Are you confident in the quality, accessibility, and timeliness of the data you are using to advise ministers? What are the limitations and have you communicated these?
• Are there existing forums or relationships that you can pull on to either understand rapidly the latest evidence to inform your advice or to access data that is not available to government?
• Have you thought about the impact of key policies on different groups, whose experiences may differ from those in decision making positions? Have you built in processes to capture their insights?
• Have you established feedback loops to understand how your interventions may need to be adapted for people or organisations in special circumstances or with additional needs?

5. Innovation and experimentation can be easier, but this should be informed by lessons from past experiences

Exogenous shocks demand action. Standard processes or approaches can become inadequate, creating both the permission – and necessity – to act differently. This can be a catalyst for innovation, or as one official put it, “to change the rules to do things”. Through the course of our research, we found this relaxation of the rules typically extends to four areas: spending, legal risk, procurement and relationships, whether between government departments or government and stakeholders. Both Furlough and Homes for Ukraine (mentioned above) illustrate this.

That said, what was less obvious, was a willingness to learn from what has gone before. Sometimes that simply isn’t possible: in the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, a policy official working on evacuation measures told us that “[to my knowledge] there weren’t many similar crises to fall back on,” leaving those involved without meaningful precedent to guide the response. But, if true, this is the exception rather than the norm. Policy making – even in a crisis – “is nearly always a brownfield development”. ²²⁶ K Josephs, ’If you could change just one thing: hacking the policy system’, Public Policy Design Blog, GOV.uk, 22 July 2021, https://publicpolicydesign.blog.gov.uk/2021/07/22/hacking-the-policymaking-system/

Governments of all stripes have struggled to learn from past lessons, both in preparation for a potential crisis and during it. ²²⁷ C Martin, H Kan, M Fink, 'Crisis preparation in the age of long emergencies’, March 2023, www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-03/BSG-Crisis-preparation-age-long-emergencies.pdf  There are clear incentives at play: for ministers, there is a desire to be seen to be gripping the situation as quickly as possible, leaving little time to learn from the past. Within Whitehall departments, knowledge management has always been weak, with crucial experience held in “individual’s heads” rather than systematically captured or evaluated. ²²⁸ T Sasse, A Thomas, ‘Better policy making’, Institute for Government, March 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/better-policy-making

This reliance on individual knowledge can create fertile ground for what Demos has called “policy heroism” – that is, a dependency on individuals who can ultimately “ride in on a white horse and save the day”. ²²⁹ A Gandon, A Garrod, ’The human handbrake: How Whitehall culture holds back public service reform’, September 2025, https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The-Human-Handbrake_Breifing_2025_Sept.pdf  This analysis has clear relevance for crisis policy making. The ‘policy hero’ mindset seldom supports long term policy stewardship; it tends to work against investment in capability and – crucially – deprioritises commitment to learn from past experiences.

However, without the deliberate creation of opportunities to pause, reflect or revisit learnings from the past, the same mistakes are repeated, contributing to future crises. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry made this point starkly. It concluded that the Grenfell fire was, in part, the result of failings by government to learn from earlier failures, citing the absence of systematic processes for recording and implementing recommendations from earlier investigations and coroners’ reports, including from the 2009 Lakanal House fire following which the coroner had issued warnings about fire safety in high-rise buildings that were not acted on. ²³⁰ Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Home Office, Cabinet Office, ’ Grenfell Tower Inquiry phase 2 report’, 4 September 2024, www.gov.uk/government/publications/publication-of-the-grenfell-tower-inquiry-phase-2-report

Key lesson 5: Innovating and learning from the past

The key insight for officials is that trying something new in a crisis is easier – and often necessary. But this will be most effective when informed by what has worked, or not worked, in the past. The prompts below support officials to do this:

• Has something like this happened before in your department, Whitehall or devolved governments that could provide useful learning?
• What assumptions about “how things are normally done” can you challenge?
• How can you better prepare for the next crisis now you’ve had this experience? How can you help others be better prepared?

6. Teams and ways of working can be adapted, but staff should be offered the same support 

While crises often require sensitive handling and may justify closed processes, the urgency and stakes involved can also create the conditions to work differently. Officials told us that, outside formal response units, crises can provide the impetus for the creation of multidisciplinary teams that bring together deep specialist expertise alongside generalists, who act as agile 'fixers’, and project managers to coordinate daily actions, roles and progress. That said, officials warned that these roles need to be kept separate, or as one official put it, “you end up with the one person everyone thinks is good doing it all”, which is not sustainable.

In some cases, building an effective team depends on bringing in external experts. Officials can find that this is possible during a genuine crisis because there is a willingness from seniors to ensure the right people are brought in quickly to provide urgent advice. For instance, during the 2008 financial crisis, an expert team was rapidly assembled and included secondees from banks, the Financial Services Authority and legal firms. The ability to bring in the right people relied on pre-existing linkages, relationships and structures, and a willingness by senior leaders to look beyond the civil service to ensure the right people with the right skills were involved.

The same conditions that allow rapid team formation can also place significant pressure on those involved, even when additional resources are brought in. There is often an initial but mistaken assumption that the disruption will be short-lived. Yet crises typically last far longer than anticipated, meaning people are often required to work at a relentless speed for longer than expected. Our research found that this ways of working is often unstainable and has long-term consequences – reduced team morale, high turnover and loss of institutional memory. ²³² V Dzimwasha, N Davison, R Hodgkin, ’Rapid policymaking’, Institute for Government, December 2025, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/rapid-policy-making

This can be mitigated by team leaders actively protecting the wellbeing of those involved. This could include giving people the ‘permission’ to log-off and ensuring clear divisions of responsibilities to spread the load. As one former Director General told us, it could also be something as simple as “ordering pizza so the team doesn’t have to worry about dinner”. 

There are established practices that work well during a crisis. A key lesson from 2008 was that a crisis demands a 24/7 response and that it cannot and should not fall on the same individual officials to deliver this in its entirety. Since then, the Treasury and other departments have increasingly moved to a ‘shift team’ model to balance the need for round-the-clock decision making with the wellbeing of those involved. 

This is also a key feature of the COBR model. Increased professionalisation in recent years – through, for example, the Crisis Management Excellence Programme - has helped build a skilled and experienced cadre within the Unit, enabling it to operate smoothly and consistently. This supports the principle that “no one is irreplaceable,” ensuring continuity even under pressure.

Key lesson 6: Getting the right people with the right skills, and supporting them

Crises can create opportunities for different team structures and ways of working seldom possible in normal times. But rapid team formation and high-intensity working comes with risks: reliance on known contacts and reduced team morale, high turnover and loss of institutional memory. The prompts below can help civil service leaders mobilise the right people for the response, while supporting them effectively:

• Which skills do you need (and already have) and which skills do you need to bring in from elsewhere in government or from outside?
• Does your team have the right balance of specialist expertise and generalists? Does everyone have one distinct role?
• Have you got connections with people outside Whitehall that you can reach at short notice and are they ready to be briefed and advised on sensitive topics (including having the relevant security clearance)?
• Who will oversee staffing? Are they clear on who is available (and in what capacity) and have they developed any contingencies plans for when people become unavailable at short notice? Do you have handover processes in place?
• Do you have plans in place to protect your team’s wellbeing? What are you doing to ensure your team feels valued and motivated during and after the crisis?

A toolkit for civil servants working at pace

The below is an illustrative journey through rapid policy making – capturing the highs and lows, the pain points that slow teams down, and ’in the moment’ support that can bring clarity, confidence, and control to teams working under pressure. 

“When I’m thrown into rapid decision-making environments (or support more junior staff in this position), I recommend that people should have a ‘vivid sense of the right behaviour’ – an intuition that they are doing it right and not messing it up.”

Senior Civil Servant

The IfG is exploring the development of a new interactive toolkit. This will be a digital resource built on a simple insight: even the most capable professionals need support when the pressure is on. Our proposed toolkit will be a streamlined, user-friendly digital resource, or ‘playbook’, designed to be immediately useful to Grade 6 and Grade 7 civil servants – the “engine room” of the civil service.

This toolkit will not aim to replace existing crisis guidance or playbooks, nor will it solve all the problems civil servants face. Instead, it will offer practical resources to tackle the biggest pain points and challenges of working under pressure. By acknowledging the real constraints officials face, the toolkit aims to support more robust policymaking at pace.

Conclusion

Crises showcase both the best and most fragile parts of government. They can create the focus, urgency and flexibility needed for rapid policy making and action. But they also expose long-standing weaknesses: a narrow focus on short-term objectives, limited safeguards to protect robust decision making, poor use of evidence, and a failure to learn from past experiences.

The insights shared above show that effective crisis policy making is not accidental: it relies on clear objectives, streamlined decision making, early and consistent engagement with those responsible for delivery, disciplined use of evidence and deliberate structures that allow officials to reflect, learn, and feel supported. Without those conditions in place, speed can come at the cost of rigour with significant and lasting consequences for government, citizens and the taxpayer.