Millions of Britons Are Now ‘Prepping’ — Survey Confirms UK Household Preparedness Has Never Been Higher

New data from Link Group — the UK’s ATM network — reveals that millions of British households are now actively preparing for major disruptions to normal services. Cash stashes, tinned food stockpiles, battery-powered torches: what was once the territory of dedicated preppers is now mainstream behaviour. This is what the numbers say — and what to do next.

Millions of Britons are now “prepping” — and for once that’s not a dramatic overstatement. A new survey by Link, the organisation that runs the UK’s cash machine network, has found that a significant proportion of UK households are taking tangible steps to prepare for events that would cause “major disruption to normal services.” Power outages, bank IT failures, natural disasters, cyber-attacks: these are no longer abstract threats in the public mind. They are things people are quietly, practically, getting ready for.

The Numbers Behind the Shift

Link’s research asked respondents what they had already done — or were now doing — to prepare for a major disruptive event. The results are striking:

• 49% have battery-powered items at home, such as a torch
• 47% have a supply of tinned goods such as baked beans and canned fruit
• 37% keep a power bank at home to keep their mobile phone charged
• 20% have access to a portable gas hob, such as a camping stove
• 17% have a stash of cash at home specifically for emergencies
• 15% have an analogue radio

Notably, 23% of those who had taken action had done so within the last three months — a direct reflection of the current threat landscape. Only 27% of respondents said they had done nothing at all to prepare.

“With rising public concern about threats like power outages, cyber-attacks and disruption to card payments, more people are prepping by keeping some emergency cash at home,” said Graham Mott, Link’s Director of Strategy.

What Is Driving This?

The survey’s timing is no accident. The drivers cited by respondents map almost exactly onto the threat environment that has been building since 2022:

• The Middle East conflict — ongoing instability affecting global energy markets and supply chains
• The war in Ukraine — prolonged disruption to energy supply and European security
• Extreme weather — flooding and severe storms becoming more frequent across the UK
• Cyber-attack risk — repeated high-profile incidents targeting UK infrastructure, including the NHS
• Power outage risk — public awareness of grid vulnerability has grown significantly since 2022

The UK government’s own Prepare website recommends households stockpile tinned food, bottled water, a first aid kit, a battery torch, a wind-up or battery radio, and a power bank — almost identical to what Link’s data shows people are actually doing. For perhaps the first time, government guidance and public behaviour are broadly aligned.

This Is Good News — But Is It Enough?

A torch and a few tins of beans is a start. It is emphatically not a plan. The difference between someone who has “done a bit of prepping” and someone who is genuinely resilient in a three-day power cut or supply disruption is preparation depth: knowing how much food, what kind of cash, and what to actually do when the situation unfolds.

The good news: none of this is complicated. The Resilience Hub covers each of these areas in detail — practical, no-nonsense guides built for UK households, not American bunker enthusiasts.

If you are one of the 47% who has tinned goods at home, here is how to do that properly:

If you are among the 49% with a battery torch, the next step is to build it out into a full blackout kit — everything in one place, ready to grab:

Your power bank (37% of you already have one) is only as useful as your charging strategy. Here is how to think about it for a multi-day outage:

And for the 15% who have an analogue radio — good instinct. Here is how to use it, and which stations to tune to when normal communications fail:

The Shift Is Real — And It Matters

Link’s data is the first of its kind in the UK: a major financial network formally tracking household resilience behaviour as part of its strategic research. The fact that it exists at all tells you something about how the conversation has changed.

UK household preparedness awareness is now at its highest point since the Covid-19 pandemic. The difference this time is that the threat is not a single event — it is a sustained, multi-source risk environment that most analysts expect to persist for years.

The question is no longer whether to prepare. The question is how well.

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