About Household Readiness
There is a lot of useful guidance already available from national and local governments, charities, regulators, specialist organisations and private companies. The challenge is that it can sometimes feel fragmented, overwhelming, overly technical or written for people and organisations with far more time and resources than the average household. This site aims to bring the key elements of that information together in one place and explain it in plain language.
When a disruption does occur, a range of organisations may be involved in the response, each working at a different level. Many will rightly focus first on those who are most vulnerable or most severely affected. That will mean the rest of us need to be able to manage on our own for a time, before external help can reach us or the systems we rely on are up and running again.
Household Readiness was created to make practical preparedness easier to understand.
Layers of response
Household Readiness focuses on helping households make sensible, practical decisions that suit their own circumstances. It builds on our own personal resilience, whether this is mental, physical or financial. It supports wider community efforts that are often already in place, to help each other and work alongside official responders.
I want the site to be useful for real life, not theoretical scenarios.
My aim is to help you feel less exposed and more confident when ordinary systems are disrupted.
About Alex Budden
I write Household Readiness as an independent adviser committed to clarity, common sense and practical solutions that help people in real world situations.
I am driven by curiosity and by asking questions about topics that interest me, challenge me or seem unclear. I bring together research, practical thinking and lived experience from my professional and personal life, both in the UK and overseas, to help households make better informed decisions.
Like many others I was not as prepared as I would have liked during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Despite having in place a reasonable level of supplies borne from my experience of power cuts and ad hoc supermarket scarcity in the UK, there were gaps in my planning. I therefore started this project to improve my, and others’, Household Readiness.
I do not claim formal emergency management qualifications, and I will defer to the experts on many issues. But I have been involved in preparing for and managing crisis situations all my working life, and believe I can play a key role in simplifying, clarifying and providing important information we should all have access to.
I want the site to feel useful, reassuring and trustworthy. Being prepared should not be ideological, political or overly dramatic. It should be proportionate, sensible and grounded in how households actually live.
My hope is simple: to help households feel better prepared, more confident and less vulnerable when ordinary systems are interrupted.
Sources & Methods
When I write for this site, I aim to use publicly available and verifiable sources wherever possible. I will usually prefer official guidance, reputable charities, established organisations and other sources that can be checked independently by readers.
However, this site is not designed to be a download of others’ information. I use that as a basis to apply my own questioning, thinking and research to draw what I believe are sensible and practical conclusions and turn those into solutions that others can use.
How I work
> I look for practical information that is relevant to households.
> I compare sources where possible rather than relying on one view alone.
> I try to simplify complex issues without distorting the meaning.
> I want to communicate key information in straight forward language.
> I aim to separate useful advice from noise, speculation or unnecessary alarm.
What this means for readers
Where I mention or summarise official or published sources, I will try and reference them so that you can read the original material if you wish. Where I make judgements or provide my own personal opinion, I will aim to make that clear.
Updating and correcting content
If I find that information is out of date or needs correction, I will review and update it.
If you spot an error, I welcome corrections and suggestions.
Monetisation
I want this project to be successful in its primary objective of helping others better prepare themselves and their households for future disruption. I have started this work using only my own time and money, and the goodwill of my family who know this is important to me.
Much of the information I provide will be completely free to use via this website. However, in order to help me cover costs of running this business, I want to be open that there will be some more comprehensive resources that need to be paid for, and I will be recommending third party products for which I will earn some financial benefit.
But I want to be absolutely clear that:
> Where I offer paid for resources these will be clearly marked on the website.
> When I recommend third party products, these will be ones that I personally believe are useful and offer value for money, and I will be transparent that there is a commercial relationship.
> These paid for or commercial products will be kept separate from the main information pages of the site, and you only need access them if you want to.
Subscribe to our newsletter
The newsletter is designed to be easy to read and useful to keep. It will focus on practical lessons, simple ideas and external information that add context or help explain a topic more clearly.
If you would like to stay informed, you will be able to sign up to receive the newsletter. It will be simple, practical and not overly frequent.
PLEASE NOTE:
This site is not for immediate emergencies involving danger to life or property such as fire, gas leaks, injury or flooding. In those situations, always follow the guidance of the emergency services, utility providers or other official responders.