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has necessitated a combination of evidence-informed risk
analysis and wide stakeholder consultation 4 .
The UK government’s role in managing public risk has
been the subject of considerable scrutiny over recent
decades 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 . In this chapter, we summarize some of the
discussions since the early 1990s to illustrate progress
in this area, and as the basis for the forward trajectory
discussed elsewhere in this volume. The general shift over
the years has been from recognizing public risk as a product
of market failure (and thus a subject for central control)
to a more devolved approach to measured risk-taking and
value creation, with accountabilities distributed between
various actors armed with high-quality evidence and
structured accountabilities for shared risk and opportunity
management. Public sector reform and modernization,
the emphasis on risk-based regulation, and the current
approach to risk and cost sharing in government all reflect
this shift. The social processes of recognizing and accepting
accountabilities for risk management and of delegating and
monitoring these are critical to ensuring that risk reduction
is secured.
Managing public risk
We recognize risk as a multidimensional concept with
social, financial, human and natural resource implications,
and with the potential for positive and negative outcomes.
Society cannot function without taking measured risks. That
is how innovations, discoveries, industrial endeavour and
societal developments have been secured. Our industrial and
civic societies are challenged when innovation is pursued,
however, because social and economic activity inevitably
comes with some risk attached. We have historically looked
to our government to manage public risk in situations
where the market fails 10 . For public risks, those that impact
on goods that are readily available to members of the
community, government departments have developed and
retained expertise to evaluate and manage risk, whether
directly or indirectly, ensuring the maintenance of the public
good 11 . That said, there is a wide variety of views on the
effectiveness of government capacity in risk management
and in its maturity in handling public risk, particularly in a
climate of cost constraint.
The United Kingdom’s stance to risk and its management
has evolved considerably, and has been highly influenced
by the socio-political landscape. The nature of a risk or
opportunity, its familiarity, location and distribution, all
influence how risk is perceived (see Chapter 9 for a richer
discussion of context, behaviour and agency). Politicians will
hear public demands for action, and the political landscape
— with all its tensions and influences — frequently
determines management action. These decisions are usually,
but not exclusively, informed by the evidence base. Political
stances also influence how risks are portrayed; and whether
the government adopts a directive or precautionary
approach, or one that is more risk-seeking in order to
capitalize upon the potential benefits 12 .
The assessment of public risk alone is insufficient as
a basis for managing it. Public risks must be assessed,
The United Kingdom’s
stance to risk and its
management has evolved
considerably.
managed, communicated and governed: the political, social
and organizational aspects of sound risk management are
as critical as the technocratic analysis of risk. Individual
and organizational accountabilities and arrangements
for managing risk prove critical and in practice, the
responsibility for managing most public risk is shared
between government, other organizations and the public.
An overriding theme of national scale risk events has
been the failures in risk management that occur when
shared responsibilities for managing risk are unclear, where
accountabilities are blurred or where the complexities of
systems are insufficiently understood. Fragile, interconnected
and excessively lean systems are vulnerable, especially where
there is a loss of oversight or where behavioural incentives
within systems, or among their custodians, are at odds with
maintaining systemic resilience to shock. Successive failures
in systemic risk management and oversight by institutions,
as illustrated by the global financial crisis (see case study),
can cause pervasive, substantive and long-lasting damage that
erodes public confidence.
A useful starting point for the recent chronology is
the Royal Society’s influential 1992 report Risk: analysis,
perception and management 13 , chaired by Sir Frederick
Warner FRS, an international authority in the field, which
was published as an update to a 1983 report on risk
assessment practice. The temporal context of the Royal
Society’s 1992 report was a catalogue of industrial disasters,
including the Piper Alpha oil rig fire in the North Sea, the
capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise, and the King’s
Cross underground station fire — all national tragedies that
had raised considerable disquiet about the management
of risk by a variety of actors. The Royal Society sought
to address developments in risk assessment practice, to
bridge the gap between quantified and perceived risk, and
to comment on the merits of risk-benefit trade-offs. The
latter parts of the report reflected an increased emphasis
on risk communication (updated in Chapter 8 by Nick
Pidgeon, a contributor to the 1992 report) and signalled the
emergence of an analytic-deliberative approach to decision
making that had been in discussion since the 1970s (refs. 14,
15).
Up until this point, one might argue that risk management
had been deployed as a defensive approach to reassure
publics that consideration had been given to a risk and
that action could be taken — displaying a tendency to
manage the perception of uncertainty and limit blame.
Hopefully, this tenor of approach is now a thing of the
past. A fundamental requirement for all risk analyses, once
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