4 Jun 2025
National Audit Office report highlights “significant gaps” in contingency plans, a lack of long-term strategy, “outdated and inefficient” processes within APHA and veterinary capacity shortages.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
The National Audit Office report makes many major recommendations to Government for the next 12 to 18 months.
The UK Government is not adequately prepared to cope with a severe animal disease outbreak, according to a new report from the National Audit Office (NAO).
The report highlighted several key issues, including “significant gaps” in its contingency plans, a lack of long-term strategy, “outdated and inefficient” processes within APHA, veterinary capacity shortages, and outdated infrastructure.
It made multiple recommendations for Defra and APHA to implement over a 12 to 18-month period, including integrating risk assessment into determining the allocation of resources and developing a workforce strategy with stakeholders in the veterinary sector.
NAO head Gareth Davies said: “Defra has assessed that the risk of an outbreak to which it would be unable to respond effectively is above the level it considers tolerable, but it has not determined a way to reduce this risk.
“A long-term strategy and action plan are urgently needed, to protect national economic resilience as well as food security, human health and rural communities.”
Defra has reported animal disease outbreaks in 16 of the past 20 years, including highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks resulting in the culling of 7.2 million birds between November 2020 and mid-March 2025.
The Government set a target of 100% of live animal imports undergoing physical checks at the border by late 2024, but Defra’s best estimate is that just 5% are currently checked.
It is said the Cabinet Office has not surveyed local authorities about outbreak response plans since 2017, while APHA had a vet vacancy rate of 20% in April 2025.
Work is underway to redevelop APHA’s Weybridge headquarters, but it is estimated the programme will cost £2.8 billion and not be completed for 10 years – Defra has assessed the risk of site failure at the highest rating of 25 out of 25.
The report noted Defra and APHA have launched initiatives such as the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway to strengthen biosecurity resilience, and that they have a “good understanding of new and emerging risks from animal diseases” with “robust arrangements” to gather intelligence.
Biosecurity minister Baroness Hayman said the Government has an “unwavering” commitment to biosecurity and pointed to recent action taken to ban European meat and dairy imports following cases of foot-and-mouth disease, as well as its £200 million investment into the new National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge.
APHA chief executive Jenny Stewart said: “We have successfully delivered disease and pest outbreak response almost continuously over recent years, including managing the largest outbreak of avian influenza this country has ever experienced while managing the spread of bluetongue disease to protect farmers while giving time for vaccination.
“I would like to thank NAO for their work on this report – we will study the findings in detail so that the UK can remain at the forefront of surveillance, diagnostics, research, and rapid response.”
